Community relations for German universities

Abstract

While companies practice community relations since many years, European and especially German universities in many cases don’t address their stakeholders in the neighbourhood systematically. In contrast, universities in the United States typically have own departments for community relations that are organizing many partnerships between universities and their community. Many institutions like European Commission stress the importance of international strategies of universities as well as the importance of universities in their specific regions. This paper focuses the necessity of strategic community relations for research institutions and universities and it gives some examples how this could be done. It is suggested to build up an European institution doing research on higher education community relations and to help universities in practicing projects with their community. The emergence of community relations Today, nearly every large company in the US as well as in Europe or Australia is practicing community relations systematically. According to Bruning/Ledingham community relations are one of three types of relationship between organizations and regional key publics (Bruning/Ledingham 1999, 163pp). The other dimensions of relationships between organizations and key publics are personal and professional relationships. Community relations in this context are strategic communication efforts with local publics. Against this, “personal relationships” of employers or management of an organization with local publics cannot be managed and planned like community relations by the department of public relations. In difference to that “professional relationships” mean not only relationships in communication but for example a company’s relationship with its local suppliers or the administration of a city. Companies having a systematical strategy in community relations know: It is essential for every-days’ work and therefore for every-days’ success to be accepted e.g. with a plant in the neighbourhood. Sure, a big plant of a company in a specific town means advantages like taxes, jobs etc. But also disadvantages like pollution, traffic, parking problems, crowded schools and daycares, increasing costs of living – the © Thomas Pleil 2004: Community relations for German universities 2/22 company and its neighbourhood affect each other (Hunt/Grunig 1994, 10). That’s why companies try to improve the acceptance of a plant within the population of a city, its politicians and public authorities with community relations (Groger 2000; 9). The aim is “the integration with society” (Caywood 1997, xi). It is tried to create a winwin-situation both for the company and its neighbourhood: On the one hand the company shows respect for the needs of its local publics and tries to support them e.g. with charity or cultural programs. On the other hand local publics should understand the needs of companies and feel that they are useful for the development of the region. The discussion on corporate citizenship (e.g. Habisch 2002, Bockelman 2000) in consequence is enforcing community relations especially in Europe at the moment. In the United States since the 1960s urban problems forced institutions and especially companies “to pay more attention to their relationships with surrounding communities” (Baskin/Aronoff 1988, 219). That’s why community relations came up. But community relations do not only show goodwill to the community, but they “reflect the interdependence of an organization and its environment” (Grunig/Hunt 1984, 266). For example, companies know the advantage in recruiting qualified stuff in an attractive surrounding. In consequence, community relations are not only the communication between an organization and its regional stakeholders but they have also a strong emphasis on relationship building and partnering with the community. Within the past five years this conceptualisation of community relations was overtaken more and more by PR scholars for nearly every field of public relations which now are defined not only as a communication function but as well as relationship management (e.g. Brody 2002, Brunig 2002). Relations with the community could enclose “health and welfare, education, government, culture, recreation and other areas” (Baskin/Aronoff 1988, 229). Though, the European discussion on corporate citizenship as well as on community relations as a part of this concept focuses on the behaviour of companies. Non-profit organizations as actors nearly don’t come up in both discussions. At first sight this seems to be obvious since a lot of non-profit organizations like environmental groups are especially supported by companies because these companies want to be good