Management Planning and Ethics

For a public affairs office to be effective, it must ensure it implements proper planning at all levels of management.

Public affairs is, simply stated, the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key audiences. As its main function is to communicate its company's, organization's or group's intended message to the public, media and civic leaders, planning is perhaps the most important of all its activities because it involves the conscious, systematic process of making decisions about goals and activities that the unit will pursue in the future (Bateman ; Snell, 2004).For the Public Affairs Office at Travis Air Force Base, California, the same is true. The office is tasked with relaying the commander's messages to the community while being the contact point for questions from both the public and media.

If a media outlet wants to know how much the base has contributed to the war in Iraq, it contacts the PA office. Likewise, if a community member wants to know whether the base is holding an air show and what the procedures for admittance will be, this person also contacts the PA office.To be able to answer all these queries accurately, the PA office's leaders regularly meet to devise and implement action plans that enable the office to successfully manage, distribute and organize how it communicates with the local community. These plans are divided into several key categories: crisis management, information management and distribution management.In the crisis management category, PA leaders think of all possible incidents that could potentially occur on the base and then what the office's actions should be. They ask questions like, "If a plane crashes trying to land, how will media be escorted onto the base, where will they be escorted to and who are the best subject matter experts to talk to them?" They then devise a list of subject matter experts, coordinate proper escorting measures with the base's security personnel and determine where to best place media personnel.

For each crisis situation considered, this same procedure is performed until the leaders feel confident in the office's ability to respond to any incident imaginable. Taylor (1990) agrees with this style of planning, saying:Effective corporate communications can be critical to how well companies recover when they are faced with public relations crises. All companies should have contingency plans so they will not have to make decisions under the pressure of a crisis. Crises plans should include a designated spokesperson, a system for obtaining accurate facts, and a means to release important information as quickly as possible.

(para 1)The second planning category, information management, is where the leadership determines which information it can release to the public and which it cannot. There is often a significant amount of operational information - things such as numbers and locations of deployed personnel, specific military targets and sensitive equipment capabilities - that is deemed classified and not for public release. However, it is in this category that many Public Affairs personnel find themselves crossing the line of ethical and social responsibility boundaries. Instead of asking themselves "Can we do this?" they ask "Should we?" For instance, Nellis Air Force Base, located in Las Vegas, Nevada, had a significant number of its personnel, most of whom were junior in rank, seriously in trouble due to gambling debts.

Instead of addressing the issue and making it public, the PA office there adopted the posture of avoidance and denied any allegations by the local media that this was an issue.Then, several months later, a member of the base went on a bank robbing spree in an attempt to cover his gambling loses. He was eventually caught and when questioned confirmed that gambling was the root cause of his, and numerous others, problems. So, the story broke in the local community that Airmen were out of control and gambling their lives away and the base's image was tarnished.

The PA office there was labeled as a "spin machine" and lost all of its credibility with the community and local media - all because the office's leaders decided what they would and would not release based on their own desires and not those of everyone involved. This is the most common mistake made by PA officers. They attempt to tell the community what they think it should know instead of what it needs to know.The Public Affairs office is frequently the ethical heart of the unit: Internal and external PA communications control of the flow of good and bad news to the community; the PR team copes with company crises; and PA leaders sit at the elbows of top officers drafting the organization's mission statements, its strategies and its vision.Often, though, ethical concerns within Public Affairs are not so cut and dry. Over the past several years, there has been a push by military leaders to use PA assets in information operations.

This push includes releasing false information in an attempt to distract or confuse the enemy. When one considers that the cornerstones of PA work are honesty, accuracy and timeliness, it is immediately apparent that releasing false information creates an ethical dilemma for PA leaders.Does the office release information that is inaccurate and false to advance the military objectives of its unit, or does it take the high ground and stand behind the veil of truth, even though so doing may hinder the unit's success? This is a battle being waged by many PA offices currently. So, the information management category of planning is becoming increasingly important to the daily operations and management of Travis' PA office.The third planning category, distribution management, is not so complicated or ethically diverse.

For the most part, when PA leaders plan distribution, they are planning how to disseminate information and who to disseminate it to. Basically, they determine how best to release information and in what forum. For instance, if a major incident occurred on base, a press conference where all information is released to a large number of media is best. If the base is going to hold an air show, however, then a simple press release faxed or e-mailed to various media outlets is usually sufficient.By planning how to respond to crises, what to release to the public so that all ethical and legal boundaries are met and how to release this information, PA leaders and managers are able to effectively set goals to accomplish their mission.