Megan Stoker and Dr. Kevin Stoker, Communications

For my ORCA project I was attempting to determine how conflicts of loyalty were addressed in modern public relations practices. From previous research I had determined that there were no clear cut guidelines for public relations practitioners to use when evaluating and deciding between two conflicting loyalties. This lack of clear guidance is particularly problematic when a practitioner is trying to decide between loyalty to the company and loyalty to the public. My research topic, therefore, was to try and create public relations practitioners could use when trying to address conflicting loyalties. I theorized that currently loyalty was more often given to the public but that the best way to address conflicting loyalties was for primary loyalty to be to personal values and to only work for a company that supports those personal values.

I approached my research in two ways. First, I looked at the philosophical definition and practice of loyalty and tried to determine how, philosophically speaking, one would approach conflicting loyalties. Secondly, I surveyed a group of about 20 public relations practitioners whose names I had attained from the PRSA membership list. I asked these professionals questions about their own personal loyalties and how they resolved loyalty issues. From these responses I determined how conflicting loyalties were approached from a practical public relations standpoint.

Generally, the research did turn out the way that I hypothesized. Most practitioners claimed that their loyalty was to the public, although it was far less distinct than I’d originally anticipated. Among those I surveyed about 30 percent said they were loyal to the public while 20 percent said they were loyal to the company. The other 50 percent were loyal to both, family or religion. Because of these answers I did have to modify my research somewhat to address the importance of family in loyalty and the unethical nature of refusing to declare a true loyalty. There was an interesting correlation between responsibility avoidance and conflicting loyalty that I had not anticipated in my previous research. This was addressed in the final paper.

The end product of my research was a decision guiding model which I presented at the International Public Relations Research conference in Miami Florida. Overall, the response was very positive although there were several suggestions for possible work on the model. One of the suggestions was to try and determine where loyalty to self and family falls in under this model. I am currently looking into this research in my graduate research.

There were two parts to the decision making model that I presented at the conference. One was a visual based model and one was the heuristic based model that is included below. These heuristics are meant to be a way for the practitioner to walk through their loyalties and determine what their internal loyalties would demand of them in any given situation.
The heuristics model is as follows:

• Identify: What issues are involved? What is the loyalty conflict?
• Internalize: What are the personal ideals or ethics involved in the issue?
• Prioritize: Which loyalty best reflects your personal values?
• Publicize: Maker public your personal values that determine your loyalties.
• Align: Do your broader loyalties reflect your personal loyalties or do they reflect group loyalties? Are your values and loyalties congruent?

If the practitioner uses the above heuristics they will be able to accurately gauge their own personal loyalties that are involved in the situation at hand and act according to those loyalties. Doing so will allow them to act ethically and if the heuristics are used universally in the public relations profession they will help to change the non-virtuous