Evaluating Public Relations Strategies of Tertiary Institutions: A Study of Technical Universities in Ghana

Abstract

Despite the indisputable role of public relations in building and maintaining beneficial relationships between organizations and their stakeholders, the Polytechnics in Ghana did not give it the necessary attention. With the conversion of all the ten national Polytechnics into Technical Universities, the need for effective and efficient public relations activities to help drive the change management process of the Technical Universities cannot be over-emphasised. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews as a qualitative tool, the study purposively sampled six senior PR practitioners from six different Technical Universities to evaluate their public relations strategies and how they were contributing towards achievement of their goals. The study found that the technical universities employed varied strategies in their PR operations, including events and publicity, media relations, radio programmes, social media and community relation. However, most of them were challenged by the fact that, the public relations function was not recognized as a management function, creating subsequent problems like insufficient budgetary allocations, inadequate logistics and under-staffed public relations departments. The heads of the public relations departments were not members of the dominant coalition contrary to the assertion of Excellence theory of public relations practice.