Public Relations Theory

6Dialogue and Organization–Public Relationships

Maureen Taylor, Michael L. Kent, and Ying Xiong

Certain words often mean one thing in everyday usage that they do not mean to professional communicators or scholars. Dialogue is just such a word, used informally every day by people to mean talk or conversation: “Ethiopia plans to release some imprisoned politicians in bid for national dialogue,” a Washington Post headline reads (February 12, 2018). Or, as a New York Times headline suggests: “France condemns killings in Cameroon, urges dialogue” (February 3, 2018). The subject matter of such stories is often about politicians talking to voters or other politicians, rather than with others.

So, what is dialogue exactly? The concept of dialogue can be traced back to Martin Buber’s book I and Thou (1958). Buber considered dialogue something that could occur in interpersonal interactions and believed that the persons involved in a dialogue should recognize the other’s innate value. Thirty years later, Ron Pearson’s dissertation (1989b) made the concept of dialogue relevant to public relations. Pearson regarded dialogue as a respectful and more ethical communication approach superior to other existing public relations approaches of the day. With the advent of the internet, Kent and Taylor (1998) first discussed dialogue through the co‐creational perspective, as a way to improve organization–public (note, read the dash as “to”) communication, and described dialogue as “any negotiated ...