Public Relations Theory

9Globalization

Chiara Valentini

Especially in the last 30 years, globalization has emerged as a central concept in public, political, and managerial discourses dealing with its impact on societies, cultures, social policies, and the lives of people in general. As a historical and social phenomenon, globalization is associated with internationalization processes, social relations, and technological developments. In public relations, globalization is often related to the increased and widespread transnationalization of organizations, particularly large corporations, and how these organizations manage the complexity and ambiguity that come when operating in multiple and diverse types of market and with heterogeneous and often diverging public groups. This transnational process, occurring first, but not only, in large corporations, has posed several challenges to the public relations profession. By the late 1980s, many companies were actually multinational and multicultural organizations and had to respond to, and be accountable to international publics and shareholders to a greater degree (Valentini, 2012). Internationally, the economic boom of the 1980s and the revitalization of a capitalist and corporatist mentality in many postsocialist countries have contributed to the diffusion of public relations in non‐Western countries (Bardhan & Weaver, 2011; Valentini, 2012).

Consequently, questions of how to address the specificities of these post‐Soviet countries when conducting public ...