A PARADIGM SHIFT IN PUBLIC RELATIONS:
MODERN PUBLIC RELATIONS AS AN INSTITUTIONALIZED PRACTICE OF MEANING MANAGEMENT
Modern public relations represents the most developed, yet also the most theoretically complex, domain of organizational meaning-management practice. Unlike traditional conceptions of public relations as a function of collecting, processing, and transmitting information, maintaining media relations, or protecting reputation, contemporary theoretical approaches start from the assumption that organizations operate in environments marked by persistent ambiguity, interpretative conflicts, and institutional pressures that cannot be resolved solely through the distribution of facts.
Under such conditions, organizational action does not appear in the public sphere as a series of objective events with pre-given meanings, but rather as a sequence of symbolic acts whose meanings are produced through the interpretations of diverse publics. Public relations, therefore, cannot be reduced to a communication technique or operational management support; instead, it must be understood as a strategic organizational mechanism of interpretative coordination—one that connects organizational intentions, cultural frameworks, and societal expectations.
In this sense, modern public relations constitutes an institutionalized practice of meaning management par excellence.
From Information Transmission to the Structuring of Interpretative Frames
The key difference between traditional and contemporary understandings of public relations lies in a shift in analytical focus—from the message to interpretation. While classical models implicitly assumed that organizational action possesses a relatively stable meaning transmitted to publics through communication, contemporary approaches argue that meaning is not a property of the message but an outcome of interpretative processes involving multiple actors.
Within this framework, the central task of public relations is not message control but the structuring of interpretative frames through which organizational action can be understood as meaningful, coherent, and socially acceptable. These frames do not determine how the publics will interpret a given event in a deterministic way, but they significantly influence which interpretations become more likely and which remain marginal.
By linking Weick’s theory of sensemaking with Gioia and Chittipeddi’s concept of sensegiving, public relations can be understood as an organizational infrastructure of sensegiving. Through public relations, organizations offer explanations, narratives, and categories that enable publics to “place” events within broader patterns of understanding. In doing so, interpretative uncertainty is reduced, although it can never be eliminated.
Public Relations as a Mechanism of Cultural Mediation
Integrating the framework of Rindova and Srinivas, public relations can be understood as an institutionalized practice of cultural meaning work. Organizations do not act outside of culture, but within existing systems of beliefs, norms, categories, and symbolic hierarchies. Any attempt at managing meaning necessarily involves a cultural dimension: the question of which interpretations are imaginable, legitimate, or persuasive within a given social context.
In this sense, public relations do not produce meanings ex nihilo; instead, they function as cultural mediators. They connect organizational identities, values, and strategies with the cultural repertoires available to different publics. Narratives of innovation, responsibility, sustainability, or crisis do not function universally; they acquire meaning only when embedded in broader cultural patterns that allow publics to recognize and interpret them.
In this process, the meaning manager in public relations emerges as an actor who understands that organizational legitimacy does not arise solely from efficiency or formal power, but from the ability to culturally “translate” organizational action into socially acceptable categories.
The Strategic Position of Public Relations: From an Operational Function to Interpretative Management
One key implication of conceptualizing public relations as a practice of meaning management is its strategic repositioning within the organization. If the goal of public relations is the creation of interpretative stability rather than mere information dissemination, then public relations cannot operate solely at the level of implementing communication activities.
Within this framework, the meaning manager must be involved in the early stages of decision-making, because meanings are not shaped only after decisions have been made, but in parallel with the decision-making process itself. Organizational strategies, restructurings, innovations, or crisis responses exist not only as substantive decisions, but also as symbolic acts that carry interpretative consequences.
Public relations becomes theoretically aligned with the field of strategic management. Their function is not reactive, but proactive and anticipatory: identifying potential interpretative ruptures, discrepancies between organizational intentions and societal expectations, and risks of legitimacy loss.
Publics as Active Co-Creators of Meaning
A central assumption of modern public relations as a practice of meaning management is the understanding of publics as active interpretative communities. Publics do not “receive” meanings; they produce them through interaction with organizational narratives, their own experiences, and broader cultural frameworks.
Meaning management does not imply domination over interpretations, but negotiation of meaning. Organizations offer interpretative frames, but publics may accept, modify, or reject them. Especially in the digital environment, the public possesses its own symbolic resources (comments, memes, viral narratives) that can redefine the meaning of organizational action independently of organizational intentions.
The meaning manager, therefore, does not act as a “controller of perceptions,” but as a facilitator of collective sensemaking processes, aware of the limits of organizational power and the necessity of dialogue.
Public Relations, Legitimacy, and Long-Term Interpretative Stability
The central outcome of modern public relations as a practice of meaning management is not short-term visibility, but long-term legitimacy. Legitimacy is not built through isolated communication campaigns, but through a continuity of interpretations that position the organization as a predictable, comprehensible, and socially acceptable actor.
Rindova and Fombrun (1999) demonstrate that reputation represents a stabilized set of meanings that enables organizations to coordinate their relationships with publics more easily. In precisely this sense, public relations functions as an infrastructural mechanism that enables such stabilization through consistent narratives, symbolic coherence, and ethically grounded interpretative frameworks.