The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing, and Leadership

The Value of Communication to an Organization

IABC's emphasis on explaining the value of public relations stimulated us to put measurement and evaluation into a broader perspective than the program level. Although program evaluation remained an important component of our theory, we realized that it could not show the overall value of the public relations function to the organization. Our review of the literature on organizational effectiveness first showed that public relations has value when it helps the organization achieve its goals. However, the literature also showed that it has to develop those goals through interaction with strategic constituencies (stakeholders and publics). We theorized that communication adds value when it helps the ...