Larissa Grunig

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Larissa Schneider Grunig
Born(1946-04-28)April 28, 1946
Lincoln, Nebraska
Alma mater North Dakota State University (Bachelor's degree), University of Maryland, College Park (Ph.D)
OccupationPublic relations

Larissa A. Schneider Grunig (born April 28, 1946) is a public relations theorist and feminist, and she is known as one of the most published and influential scholars in public relations. [1] A professor emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park, Department of Communication, Grunig taught public relations and communication research since 1979. Based on a content analysis of three academic journals (Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research and its precursor, Public Relations Research Annual) from their foundation through the year 2000, Grunig was recognized as one of the five most prolific authors contributing to public relations theory development. [2] Her research focuses on public relations, development communication, communication theory, gender issues, organizational response to activism, organization power and structure, ethics, philosophy, scientific and technical writing, and qualitative methodology. [3]

Contents

Early life

She began her professional career as a public school teacher. Then Grunig became a reporter and editor of a community newspaper in Colorado. Beginning in 1969, she served as a public relations consultant. [3]

Career

Grunig received her Ph.D. in public communication from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1985, and taught in the College of Journalism and Department of Communication there. In addition to her work in the journalism and communication departments, she was an affiliate faculty member of Maryland's School of Public Affairs and its Women's Studies Program. [3]

Teaching

Prior to teaching at University of Maryland, College Park, Grunig was a Title III Visiting Scholar at Eastern Washington University in 1992 and taught at Washington State University from 1984 to 1985. During her time teaching, Grunig advised 100 master's students (overseeing 30 master's theses and 70 master's degree students who chose the non-thesis option) and ten doctoral dissertations. She was honored with the title Outstanding Educator by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) in 1996. [3]

Of the 30 master's theses that she advised, three won the Institute for Public Relations outstanding master's thesis competition. [1] In 1991, Grunig was honored by the University of Maryland System with the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Mentor Award, and in 1999, she was listed as one of the nation's Top 10 educators by PR Week. [3]

Publications

In addition to serving on the advisory board of thirteen refereed journals, Grunig has written more than 200 articles, book chapters, and conference papers on public relations, communication theory and other topics. [3] From 1987 to 1990, she was a founding co-editor of the Public Relations Research Annual (now the Journal of Public Relations Research). Grunig also co-authored the first book about women in public relations alongside Elizabeth Lance Toth and Linda Childers Hon; the book was called "Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice." The book was a finalist for the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the best book in journalism and mass communication in 2001. [3]

Grunig began researching excellence in public relations beginning in 1985 as a member of an international grant team supported by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation. [3] The project, termed the Excellence Study, culminated in three sequential books, the last of which Grunig was the first author (James E. Grunig and David M. Dozier also co-authored). [3] The book, titled "Excellence in Public Relations and Effective Organizations: A Study of Communication Management in Three Countries," won the 2002 PRIDE book award of the National Communication Association's Public Relations Division for its innovation and scholastic achievement in public relations research. [3]

Association Membership

She is a member of the National Capital and Maryland chapters of PRSA and was named to the Hall of Fame of the National Capital Chapter in 1999. From 1985 to 1988, Grunig served as an adviser to the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) for the chapter at the University of Maryland, College Park. [3]

Additional Awards

Grunig, along with her husband James Grunig, was honored with the 2010 Presidential Award of the International Public Relations Association for "outstanding contribution to better world understanding." [3] She received the Alumni Achievement Award of North Dakota State University, which is her undergraduate alma mater, in 2003. [3]

Personal life

Grunig is married to James E. Grunig, a public relations scholar and theorist. James and Larissa Grunig have four children and five grandchildren. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public</span> Grouping of individual people

In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science, psychology, marketing, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, and suffered more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public Relations Society of America</span> Nonprofit trade association for public relations professionals

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is a nonprofit trade association for public relations professionals. It was founded in 1947 by combining the American Council on Public Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Councils. That year, it had its first annual conference and award ceremony.

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is a global network of communications professionals.

Organization–public relationships is public relations between an organization and the public.

The situational theory of publics theorizes that large groups of people can be divided into smaller groups based on the extent to which they are aware of a problem and the extent to which they do something about the problem. For example, some people may begin uninformed and uninvolved; communications to them may be intended to make them aware and engaged. Communications to those who are aware but disengaged may focus on informing them of ways in which they could act. Further classifications are made on the basis to which people are actively seeking or passively encountering information about the problem.

James E. Grunig is a public relations theorist, Professor Emeritus for the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media</span>

The UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media is a nationally accredited professional undergraduate and graduate level journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The school, founded in 1950, is ranked competitively among the best journalism schools in the United States. The school offers undergraduate degrees in media & journalism as well as advertising & public relations. It offers master's degrees in journalism, strategic communication, and visual communication and doctoral degrees in media & communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications</span> Academic college of the University of Florida

The College of Journalism and Communications (CJC) is an academic college of the University of Florida. The centerpiece of the journalism programs at UF is WUFT, which consists of both a WUFT (TV) Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Public television and WUFT-FM NPR public radio station. The commercial broadcasting radio station, WRUF, is also one of the oldest stations in the state.

Jeffrey R. Caponigro is an American public relations and marketing executive, entrepreneur, and former journalist. He is the founder and CEO of Caponigro Public Relations Inc., Southfield, Michigan, and the Executive Vice President-Corporate Communications and Chief Marketing Officer for Trion Solutions, Inc., one of the United States' largest HR-administration companies, with corporate headquarters in Troy, Michigan.

The contingency theory of accommodation was proposed in 1997 by Amanda Cancel, Glen Cameron, Lynne Sallot and Michel Mitrook to highlight the pertinent factors of how a public relations practitioner facilitates communication between the organization and its external publics.

The Excellence theory is a general theory of public relations that “specifies how public relations makes organizations more effective, how it is organized and managed when it contributes most to organizational effectiveness, the conditions in organizations and their environments that make organizations more effective, and how the monetary value of public relations can be determined”. The excellence theory resulted from a study about the best practice in public relations, which was headed by James E. Grunig and funded by the Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1985. Constructed upon a number of middle-range theories, and tested with surveys and interviews of professionals and CEOs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and South Korea, the Excellence theory provides a “theoretical and empirical benchmark” for public relations units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allissa Richardson</span> American journalist and college professor

Allissa V. Richardson is an American journalist and college professor. She is best known as a proponent of mobile journalism and citizen journalism. Richardson has trained students in the United States and Africa to report news using only smartphones, tablets and MP3 players. She is assistant professor of journalism in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Additionally, Richardson is a Nieman Foundation Visiting Journalism Fellow at Harvard University, the 2012 Educator of the Year for the National Association of Black Journalists, and a two-time Apple Distinguished Educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betsy Plank</span> Public relations executive

Betsy Ann Plank is commonly referred to as the first lady of public relations. In her 63-year-long career, she achieved many first in public relations leadership positions for women.

Susan Zaeske is Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture in the Department of Communication Arts and Arts and was formerly Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lana F. Rakow is a professor emerita of communication at the University of North Dakota and author of Gender on the Line: Women, the Telephone, and Community Life (1992). In 2000, she was identified as a top woman scholar in journalism and mass communication, and her research results were reported by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication on the Status of Women. She also has numerous other published works that are primarily in the fields of communication and feminist theory.

The situational theory of problem solving attempts to explain why and how an individual communicates during a problematic situation. The situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) was proposed by Jeong-Nam Kim and James E. Grunig in 2011 though their article “problem solving and communicative action: A situational theory of problem solving.” The theory was developed from the situational theory of publics (STP) and claimed it is “an extended and generalized version” of STP. This theory has an assumption that “the more one commits to problem resolution, the more one becomes acquisitive of information pertaining to the problem, selective in dealing with information, and transmissive in giving it to others.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurine Beasley</span>

Maurine Beasley is professor emerita of Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park. She is known for her studies on the history of women in journalism, especially during early periods when they were poorly represented in the field, and for her research concerning the life and work of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Kathleen S. Kelly is an American public relations theorist and academic administrator. She is a professor and chair of the department of public relations at University of Florida. Kelly was the Hubert J. Bourgeois Research Professor in Communication at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She served as associate dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Kelly is a Fellow of the PRSA.

Elizabeth Lance Toth is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park known for her work on public relations research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melissa Steyn</span> South African academic

Melissa Steyn is a South African academic based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Prior to moving to Johannesburg in 2011, she taught at the University of Cape Town.

References

  1. 1 2 Toth, Elizabeth (2007). The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. ISBN   0805855963.
  2. ↑ Sallot, Lynne M.; Lisa Lyon; Carolina Acosta-Alzuru; Karyn Ogata Jones (2003). "From Aardvark to Zebra: A New Millennium Analysis of Theory Development in Public Relations Academic Journals". Journal of Public Relations Research. 15 (1): 27–90.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Sriramesh, Krishnamurthy; Zerfass, Ansgar; Kim, Jeong-Nam (2013). Public Relations and Communication Management. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN   9780415523189.
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