Public relations and communication management: Suitable subjects for management education?

Abstract

This paper confirms the importance of the various aspects of public relations as necessary skills for senior managers, both in the profession and in organisations, and the need to raise the level of management skills among practitioners. It argues that a specialist MBA in public relations (PR) is not necessarily the most appropriate way of meeting those objectives and suggests that more needs to be done to encourage public relations and corporate communication practitioners to take part in general management education and to develop their professional knowledge and qualifications. At the same time, the business and management schools could make explicit the extent to which management education already covers areas of interest to practitioners in these fields and collaborate with the profession to develop qualifications, teaching programmes and materials.