An organisation may communicate daily, conduct surveys and establish new channels for dialogue, yet remain closed to the experiences of those affected by its decisions. This apparent contradiction raises a fundamental question for contemporary public relations: what happens to information once an organisation receives it? If a complaint ends up in a report no one considers, and consultation begins only after a final decision, communication may be intensive while its managerial value remains limited. Substantive openness begins when public experience becomes grounds for reconsidering organisational conduct.
Herein lies both the scholarly and practical significance of distinguishing between open and relatively closed systems of public relations. Organisations depend on people, knowledge, resources and social support, but dependence alone does not ensure a willingness to learn. They may monitor public opinion closely in order to defend existing decisions more persuasively. They may, however, use the same insights to assess whether those decisions are justified. The distinction between these approaches concerns our understanding of management, accountability, and the professional role of public relations.
Systems theory allows us to examine this distinction beyond the narrow confines of communication techniques. In Ludwig von Bertalanffy's work, an open system sustains itself through exchange with its environment. Applied to organisations, this perspective highlights the relationship between internal processes and external operating conditions. Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn examine organisations through recurring cycles of resource inputs, transformation and outputs. Institutional continuity thus depends on the capacity to renew activities and relationships. The persistence of an institution's rules does not, by itself, show that it fulfils its purpose effectively.
This starting point matters especially when people attribute problems to individuals even though they arise from organisational relationships. A delayed response to a service user may result from unclear responsibilities, multiple approval stages or inaccessible information. An employee's courtesy may then alleviate dissatisfaction without removing its cause. Systems thinking requires examining how a procedure is designed, who is responsible for it, and what consequences it produces. Public relations gains managerial significance when it links users' experiences to these questions.
The analogy between a living organism and a social organisation must nevertheless be applied with caution. Institutions operate within a realm of meanings, values, conflicting interests and decisions for which identifiable individuals are accountable. Jurisdiction, access to information, and opportunities for participation also define their boundaries. An employee may formally belong to an organisation yet remain excluded from decisions that directly affect their work. An external collaborator may, at the same time, exercise considerable influence. Research into openness must therefore address actual pathways of influence alongside the organisation's formal structure.
Feedback is crucial to this relationship. Norbert Wiener's cybernetic tradition links communication to a system's capacity to correct its operation. In organisational life, however, information does not travel through a neutral space. It may arrive late, lose its meaning as it passes through the hierarchy or be adjusted to meet superiors' expectations. A report that records satisfaction while omitting recurrent difficulties creates an incomplete picture of relationships with publics. Therefore, it is necessary to trace information's entire passage, from the experience of the person who identifies a problem to the body authorised to resolve it.
In Public Relations – Principles and Models, the systems approach connects organisational action with its consequences for publics. Organisational outputs include products and services, as well as satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and broader social effects. This broader perspective changes the criteria for assessing success. A procedure that reduces an organisation's costs may simultaneously increase the burden on users. Savings in one department may generate additional work in another. Evaluating success therefore also depends on whose experience is considered and whose remains outside the analysis.
The open systems model developed by Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Centre and Glen M. Broom provides an important foundation for this understanding of public relations. It connects research into relationships with publics, organisational action, communication and the possibility of organisational adaptation. Feedback may prompt changes to structures, plans or programmes. In the relatively closed version, the organisation seeks to preserve the status quo and directs its efforts toward changing attitudes and behaviour in its environment. The distinction thus concerns what the organisation is prepared to subject to scrutiny.
Theoretical oversimplification must be avoided here. Organisational adaptation already forms part of the original understanding of the open model; presenting it as a subsequently discovered possibility would be unjustified. Broom associated public relations with the organisation's adaptive subsystem and with participation in managerial decision-making. Further conceptual development requires more precise questions: how are publics' experiences considered, on what criteria do they influence decisions, and how is the implementation of agreed changes assessed?
These questions explain why two-way communication does not, in itself, ensure mutual influence. An organisation may listen to understand resistance better and then adjust only its persuasive approach. A survey, meeting or comment platform demonstrates that a communication channel exists. What happens to the insights collected reveals more about its actual role. If organisational objectives and procedures are excluded from advance discussion, participation remains narrow, regardless of the number of responses received. A formal opportunity to speak is insufficient to show that decision-makers have genuinely considered someone's voice.
The relationship between proactivity and reactivity also requires precision. A proactive approach lets problems be identified early and consequences considered before a decision is implemented. Its value increases when publics can influence a solution while alternatives remain open. Nevertheless, a campaign prepared in advance may also serve to preserve a predetermined outcome. Conversely, responding to a complaint may initiate substantive change. An organisation that corrects a procedure following a justified warning demonstrates a capacity to learn, even though it acted after the problem emerged. The timing of action and the willingness to adapt are related but distinct dimensions.
For this reason, the cessation of public criticism should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that a problem has been resolved. A public may withdraw through exhaustion, a sense of powerlessness or the belief that raising concerns is futile. The institution then receives fewer complaints, while the quality of its relationships may continue to deteriorate. Assessing effectiveness requires examining affected groups' experiences and the consequences of the measures taken. Media visibility provides an important signal, but it does not capture every dimension of a problem. Pay particular attention to those who lack access to influential channels or the resources to advocate persistently for their interests.
On this basis, I propose a Framework for Responsible Organisational Openness. It connects communicative openness, managerial openness, and accountability to publics within an integrated process of considering experiences, explaining decisions, and evaluating their effects. This is a conceptual elaboration that requires empirical validation. It seeks to describe more precisely the conditions under which information gathering contributes to organisational learning and to make those conditions amenable to research.
Communicative openness concerns the accessibility of channels and the capacity to receive diverse experiences. Research should establish who can approach the organisation, whose contributions are recorded and which groups remain outside its field of attention. Jim Macnamara's work on organisational listening supports an understanding of listening as an institutionally organised practice. Documenting and considering public contributions requires time, responsibility, and procedures. An individual communication practitioner's responsiveness can hardly compensate for the absence of these conditions.
Managerial openness concerns the capacity of collected insights to influence the agendas, criteria and decisions of the relevant authorities. An organisation may be communicatively accessible yet managerially closed if it gathers opinions without being willing to examine its own assumptions. Another difficulty may arise: management is willing to correct an error but remains unaware of it because channels are inaccessible. Considering both dimensions enables a more precise diagnosis. In one case, the route through which information reaches decision-makers needs to change; in the other, decision-makers must first be allowed to hear relevant experiences.
Accountability connects the receipt of information with the explanation of a decision and the assessment of its consequences. For a relevant request, it should be possible to establish who considered it, the grounds on which the decision rested, who is responsible for implementation and how its effects will be evaluated. The process also includes reporting back to the public concerned. Such traceability allows scrutiny of organisational commitments and distinguishes a formally closed case from a difficulty that has actually been resolved. It also provides a basis for reconsideration if the adopted solution fails to produce the expected result.
Consider a university approached by students about a complex procedure for accessing a particular entitlement. If the problem is interpreted in advance as inadequate information, the response will probably consist of more detailed instructions. A more open approach involves discussing the issue with students and considering whether the required documents, deadlines, and criteria are justified. Responsible conduct also requires explaining the decision and assessing whether the entitlement has become more accessible. It is useful to include students who never applied because they regarded the procedure as inaccessible. This hypothetical example shows how an organisation's understanding of a problem can change substantially when research includes experiences beyond the official record of complaints.
The depth of learning may vary. Chris Argyris's distinction between single-loop and double-loop learning helps explain the difference between correcting a procedure and reconsidering the assumptions on which it rests. Reducing response time is a worthwhile improvement. Asking why a particular document is required at all invites deeper analysis. An organisation needs to be capable of both forms of learning, depending on the nature of the problem. Otherwise, it may efficiently enforce a rule whose justification has long gone unexamined.
Responsible openness does not entail accepting every demand. Publics may have conflicting interests, while the organisation must safeguard its purpose, available resources, and legitimate confidentiality boundaries. A request for an explanation of criteria does not automatically confer a right of access to other people's personal data. Rejecting a proposal may be justified if it follows genuine consideration, if the reasons are intelligible and if the decision remains open to scrutiny. It is particularly important to establish how benefits and burdens are distributed among groups. Openness loses its responsible character when adaptation amounts to yielding to the most influential.
The scholarly value of the proposed framework will depend on its capacity for empirical validation. A suitable starting point would be to trace a specific decision over a defined period, from the first warning to the effects of implementation. Documents, interviews with decision-makers and publics' experiences could reveal whether feedback actually entered the decision-making process. Researchers would also need to consider alternative explanations for change, such as regulatory pressure, leadership changes, or available resources. Temporal association between a complaint and a correction is not sufficient evidence of a causal relationship.
This places a clear demand on the public relations profession. Its credibility depends on its ability to make publics' experiences relevant to management by professionally interpreting problems and their consequences. Communication practitioners need access to decision-making and the opportunity to raise concerns that an organisation may be reluctant to hear. Management ultimately remains responsible for decisions, but the quality of those decisions may depend on how effectively public relations connects the internal perspective with the experiences of people beyond organisational boundaries.
An open organisation demonstrates its maturity in how it responds when its understanding of its own conduct diverges from the experiences of its publics. Such moments test the value of research, the purpose of dialogue and the seriousness of commitments made. A willingness to consider a warning, explain a decision and assess its effects enables an organisation to turn its own mistakes into a basis for learning. Through this capacity for responsible self-examination, public relations affirms its managerial and societal value.