Today's Public Relations: An Introduction/Applied Public Relations: Cases in Stakeholder Management

* Heath, Robert L. and Timothy Coombs (2006). Today's Public Relations: An Introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 539. * Lamb, Larry F. and Kathy Brittain McKee. (2005). Applied Public Relations: Cases in Stakeholder Management. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 258. With so many "skills" courses in journalism schools, it's refreshing to see a public relations text with a theoretical frame. Larry Lamb and Kathy Brittain McKee tell readers on page one that their text is written from a systems theory perspective, explain what this means, and describe why this frame is a good fit for the field. A couple of pages later they acknowledge that other theoretical perspectives and constructs also could be applied to the material, and they list more than half a dozen of these. They also note that knowledge of marketing, management, and contemporary media practices also are vital for public relations practitioners. The authors do a good job of incorporating some of these basic management, marketing, and media concepts in the material that introduces each of the nine clusters of different "stakeholder" cases-from employees and consumers to media and investors to volunteers and activists and beyond-and through four guest commentaries from practitioners and educators interspersed throughout the book. However, I would value a brief introduction of the other theoretical perspectives that could help inform the case analyses as well, perspectives they mention but don't define, such as diffusion of innovations, elaboration likelihood model, framing, and social learning. These additional perspectives could have been included in a box within relevant cases or discussed via guest commentary without detracting from the overall systems framework. Professors who adopt this text may want to offer such supplemental information to help reinforce the theories many public relations students have been introduced to in earlier classes and to help demonstrate their practical application. Likewise, there is scant information about ethics in the text, but questions about ethics are included in the recommended analysis questions. Although students should have already been exposed to public relations ethics before using this book, professors likely will want to provide supplemental information to them before meaningful case analysis can begin. With its forty-three case studies organized by primary stakeholder type, this text gives professors lots of content options and is probably best suited for use in a public relations case studies or management course, as a supplemental campaigns book, or even as a reference for practicing professionals. What I like most about the book is that the authors included not only award-winning campaigns but also cases that didn't necessarily go particularly well. I believe these examples are the ones from which we often can learn the most. The relatively brief but thoughtful introductions to each cluster of cases are valuable in framing students' subsequent reading, and the incorporation of crisis situations into existing stakeholder categories, rather than including them as part of an artificially separate unit, makes sense. This book also does a good job of discussing nonprofit organizations and government campaigns, which are areas not always addressed well, if at all, in other public relations case studies texts. However, additional examples of campaign materials and a more attractive duplication of those that are included would likely appeal more to students, as the limited reproductions are small, and the book has a textheavy design. …