ethics in pr
... structure, (Skinner et al, 14). It is the responsibility of the public relations practitioner to make ethical decisions and promote a corporate culture that embraces ethics and acts in a way that that will be in the best interest of our global society. On a day to day basis there are many ethical issue that a public relations practitioner will encounter. Harold Burson, chairman of a large public relations firm, claims that there are four main tasks in which a public relations practitioner will partake. The responsibilities include being a sensor of social change, a corporate conscious, communicator and corporate monitor, (Johnson and Zawawi, 5). All for of these tasks call for ethical behavior. Kruckeberg notes that ethical values are important in public relations, “because they allow us to identify ourselves as a professional community by defining our relationship with society, (Stark and Kruckeberg, 36). This ability to relate professionalism to society is an integral part of modern public relations. Edward Bernays proves this in his definition of public relations practitioner as, “a person that advises a client or employer on the socially sound attitudes to take to win the support of publics on whom viability depends, (Bernays). The public relations practitioner also has the responsibility to promote an ethical corporate culture with those companies they work with/for. An unethical corporate culture does not arise from a company that aims to hurt its publics. Instead it comes from the bureaucratic organizational structures that allow people to avoid taking responsibility for unethical actions. There are two main causes for this. Top level management establishes code of ethics, policies and procedures. The lower level employees work within the set parameters. Most often the employees at this level will not take personal responsibility for their actions if they have followed the corporate governance. This setup makes it easy to rationalize ethics as someone else’s problem. This rational is also a problem in large corporations that break task into very small components. In this kind of envirment an employee may inadvertily make an unethical or illegal decision because they were unaware of all the circumstances. An example of this is a secretary who sheds papers that were uder supina froma court of law, (Skinner et al, 15). Companies also unknowing encourage unethical behaviour because they have unclear ethical codes. This creates a situation where employees are ‘ethical segregationists’ and use a different set of moral codes in their personal and professional lives. It is the responsibility of the public relations practitioner monitor employees and the corporate code of ethics to make sure there are no discrepancies. If any of these situations are evident the public relations practioner should push for futher ethics training and encourage clarification of corporate ethical code. Another issue that public relations practitioners face is globalization. Once a company is internally ethical it should consider the implications of the effect on other cultures. “ Public relations practitioners have a professional and social responsibilyt to develop a society and corresponding worldview compatible with the normative moral fabric of the indigenous societies in which corporations exsist,” (Stark and Kruckeberg, 36) . The case of James Hardie Inudtires illustratrates the unethical behvior of a coprpation and their public relations practitioners. James Hardie is a multinational corpation. Until the mid-1980s it was the largest manufacturer of asbestos-containg products in Australia. Australia had the highest per capita use of asbestos in the world between the 1950s-1970s. it is believed by many that Janes Hardie was aware of the dangers of asbestos since the 1930s, but never put warning on their products. Asbestos causes many respiratory related diseases including mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining that causes extreme pai...