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Beyond culture

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DOI: 10.1108/CCIJ-04-2014-0022

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 Corporate Communications: An International Journal
Beyond culture: Further dimensions of difference in corporate communication operating
environments in South East Asia
Graeme William Domm,
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Corporate
Beyond culture communication
Further dimensions of difference in operating
corporate communication operating environments
environments in South East Asia 357
Graeme William Domm
School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Received 13 April 2014
Revised 24 May 2014
Melbourne, Australia Accepted 5 June 2014
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Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices and outlooks of public relations (PR)
and corporate communication practitioners in six countries of South East Asia, through the eyes of
practitioners themselves.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on the findings of a doctoral research project
comprising an online questionnaire sent to 100 active PR and corporate communication practitioners
in six countries of South East Asia, attracting 30 responses; and a subsequent series of 14 semi-
structured, in-depth face-to-face interviews. While taking some account of a range of theories in
formulating questions, the research is primarily inductive in nature, seeking to reveal self-perceptions
of the working worlds, worldviews, values and concerns of practitioners themselves.
Findings – The project confirms, in the South East Asian context, hypotheses previously advanced
by researchers including Sriramesh (2004), Sriramesh and Vercic (2001), Bardhan (2011) and others
which assert that distinctive worldviews and local and regional cultures can be significant
considerations in understanding the ways that communication strategies are developed and applied
in different geographical locations. Going further, the research confirms that local practitioners see
other environmental variables including differences in infrastructure, the composition of local
languages and a range of other factors which go beyond “attitudes” and “values” as having important
impacts as well, and therefore being worthy of more detailed attention by international communication
planners and scholars.
Research limitations/implications – The research has implications for practitioners seeking to
develop effective communication strategies in South East Asian environments. For scholars, the
research has implications for better understanding of the significance of a range of environmental
variables which may impact the effectiveness of professional practice in the region but which as yet
may not be sufficiently recognised by existing theory and case studies. The project has a small sample
size, with respondents drawn primarily from the membership of two English-speaking international
professional associations. All research was also conducted in English. It may therefore not be fully
representative of all practitioners across the region.
Practical implications – The findings draw attention to ways that communication strategies might
be more successfully developed and applied in particular Association of South East Asian Nations
countries, and how professional practice in this region can help to better inform the development of
more inclusive, comprehensive and critical “international” PR theory, curriculum and pedagogy.
Social implications – The research has social implications in regard to promoting better
understanding of the outlooks and influences upon a group of professional people who arguably enjoy
disproportionate influence upon the communities and societies in which they operate, by virtue of the
work they undertake to explain, persuade and build relationships on behalf of other influential parties.
Originality/value – This is the first research project providing extensive first-hand simultaneous
insights into the working worlds and personal outlooks of a broad cross-section of corporate
communication practitioners across a number of major countries of South East Asia, embracing a Corporate Communications: An
International Journal
comprehensive range of discussion topics. Vol. 19 No. 4, 2014
Keywords Cross-cultural management, Globalization, Communication processes, pp. 357-370
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Communication management, Corporate communications, Communications technologies 1356-3289
Paper type Research paper DOI 10.1108/CCIJ-04-2014-0022
 CCIJ Introduction: communication without borders?
19,4 In recent decades a steadily increasing amount of literature has been emerging
about international corporate communication and public relations (PR) practice,
highlighting the extent to which operating environments, attitudes and
practices may vary beyond the well-documented locations of North America and
Western Europe.
358 Over the past two decades awareness has risen of the need to consider the impacts
of cultural differences and other locational variables on the way in which PR and
corporate communication practice typically operates in different locations, particularly
when considered in relation to the accepted models and theories developed over 30 or
so years in western nations (e.g. see Grunig, 1992; Vercic, 2000; Sriramesh, 2004). Most
recently, authors including Hodges (2006), Pal and Dutta (2008) and Bardhan (2011)
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have endeavoured to broaden the theoretical perspectives on PR practice to give more

recognition to local social contexts.
However, the literature still tends to focus, for the most part, on only one aspect
of the “dimensions of difference” to be found between different locations: the dimension
of culture.
There is good reason for this, of course. Culture is a conspicuous and noteworthy
variable. In the view of local practitioners, cultural difference warrants closer attention
than it yet receives in most mainstream PR and corporate communication literature.
Cultural difference is viewed as important by most practitioners, and something which
affects their working world in significant ways.
But having acknowledged the perceived importance of culture amongst
practitioners there is, however, a risk that a tendency to focus primarily on
conspicuous cultural dimensions of “attitude” and “values” may divert attention from
other points of comparison and contrast that are arguably no less important for the
success of practitioners pursuing communication objectives amongst target publics in
“non-western” countries.
In this paper, I seek to shed more light on some of these other dimensions, as noted
by practitioners themselves. In doing so, I am mindful of the fact that a range of
international locational variables have been propounded previously by academic
writers over the past two decades, but that, in the view of one of the leaders in this field,
Sriramesh (2009), the body of PR knowledge continues to exhibit serious deficiency in
terms of real empirical evidence from different parts of the world and with much of the
so-called “international” data in the literature still coming only from a small set of
countries. This research aims to help supply more such empirical data, inasmuch as
practitioner observations can play such a role.

A note on definitions
In passing, it may be worth noting that it would be easy in this kind of research to
become bogged down in circular arguments about what factors are truly “cultural” and
what factors, if any, might be viewed as being distinct from culture. This paper does
not seek to resolve such semantic debate. Rather, it takes the more pragmatic approach
of simply focusing on some particular local characteristics identified by respondents
themselves, which (whether or not they are considered “cultural”, at least in part)
rarely feature as a major part of the discourse about significant variables that affect the
work of practitioners across the globe. As revealed by the respondents in the current
study, some especially noteworthy dimensions to consider in this respect include:
varying infrastructure levels; the structures of local languages; political and media
 systems which have evolved in quite distinctive ways; varying education levels and Corporate
attitudes to education; and other factors. communication
These will all be discussed in this paper. Before doing so, it will be useful first to
briefly review some key research previously undertaken in the field of international operating
and cross-cultural PR. environments
International and cross-cultural PRs and corporate communications research 359
The field of “international” PR and corporate communication has been trodden by a
relatively small number of researchers to date. The recognised doyen of US PR theory,
James Grunig, from the mid 1990s worked with colleagues in a number of countries
(Grunig et al., 1995; Vercic et al., 1996) to begin sketching the outlines of “environmental
variables” which might affect the practice of PR and corporate communication in
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different geographic locations. He was joined by others including Dejan Vercic, who
from Slovenia focused attention on factors important in central and Eastern Europe
(Vercic, 2000; Sriramesh and Vercic, 2001); Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, who alone and
with others investigated variables relevant to Asian countries, beginning with India
(Sriramesh, 1992a, b, 2004). In their analysis the authors drew considerably on five
dimensions of culture identified by Geert Hofstede (1981, 2001), dimensions which are
dominant in this and widely embraced and taught in management education
programmes around the world.
Other researchers produced papers about PR and corporate communication practice
in specific “non-western” locations in Asia and elsewhere from the 1970s onwards
(Idid, 1978, 2004; Arun, 1986; Nordin, 1986; Lowe, 1986; Al-Enad, 1990; Tan, 2001).
Most of these, however, took a broadly descriptive rather than a deeply analytical or
critical look at their local scenes, with little explicit exploration of the extent to which
local attitudes or practices might fundamentally diverge from the western model of
practice. The implicit assumption, perhaps, was that local professions were simply
evolving towards the western model, and as yet were only partially developed.
A small number of papers delved more fundamentally into questions of values,
attitudes and other more deeply embedded differences, though not necessarily of an
ethno-cultural nature. For example, Toth (1992) sought to broaden PR studies to
embrace rhetorical, critical and system perspectives and also analysed gender issues in
the profession (Toth and Grunig, 1993). In the USA at least, there was evidence that
women practitioners tend to perform broader roles than men, combining both technical
and managerial functions, but often with less recognition that they were performing
managerial roles (Aldoory and Toth, 2002). The applicability of any of this to South
East Asia has remained unclear.
Van Leuvan (1996), attempted the first South East Asian-oriented review of PR,
emphasising the distinctive contribution PR activities had made to Singapore and
Malaysian efforts to forge strong national identities in their populations in the
turbulent post-colonial period. Sriramesh (2004) subsequently developed an anthology
of PR practice in Asia, drawing on the work of notable PR scholars based in the region
including Ananto (2004) in Indonesia and Ekachai and Komolsevin (1996, 2004) in
Thailand. These regional scholars primarily concerned themselves with analyses framed
around Grunig’s “Excellence Model”, with its focus on the role of communication in
organisational performance – and implicitly seeking greater management recognition for
the roles played by practitioners in achieving such performance.
Notwithstanding the above outputs, a major conclusion drawn by Sriramesh (2004,
2009) is that despite such careful mapping out of environmental variables by himself
 CCIJ and other regional authors, there is still little empirical evidence at hand on the
19,4 linkage between these variables and actual PR practice in most parts of the world.
Such links can still only be made “conceptually” or based on limited available
anecdotal evidence (Sriramesh, 2004, p 3). Nevertheless, five particular environmental
variables set out first by Vercic et al. (1996), and endorsed by Sriramesh in the Asian
context, provide some tangible dimensions for consideration of professional practice
360 in different locations, and they remain noteworthy to this day: political ideology,
economic system (including its level of development), level of activism, culture and
media system.
Among the very few papers from outside Europe, the USA and Asia which have
addressed ways in which western approaches to PR may be open to challenge elsewhere
are one from South Africa, questioning the relevance and realism of communication
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“symmetry” in the model propounded by Grunig when viewed in an African context

(Holtzhausen et al., 2003), and one from New Zealand (Motion and Leitch, 2001),
contending that the single-minded drive to develop a comprehensive, all-encompassing
body of theory of PR has tended to render invisible any (inconvenient?) differences in
PR practice based on culture, regional location and other variables.
In recent years there have been signs of resurgent scholarly interest in quantifying
the extent and relevance of environmental variables that might affect PR practice in
Asian locations, with the biggest focus still going towards matters of cultural values
and cultural distinctiveness and how these might affect the work of professional
communicators. Important examples of such research include the work of Bardhan
(2011), L’Etang (2011) and Pal and Dutta (2008). These scholars have sought to broaden
the theoretical and cultural prisms through which international PR can be viewed,
embracing disciplines including anthropology and critical modernism as well as more
conventional PR theory. L’Etang, in particular, has argued passionately for PR
scholarship to start adopting a more “ethnographic” focus, drawing on the discipline of
anthropology. PR research has been constrained by its adherence to culturally specific
western models of organisational achievement and performance, and the consideration
of PR’s role in this. Broader insights might be gained from a more wide-ranging
exploration of what PR practitioners in a range of locations actually think and do, and
the broader societal contexts in which they operate (L’Etang, 2011, p. 16).
As L’Etang observes: “The dominance of functional, instrumental research into the
public relations discipline has resulted in uni-dimensional and rather unimaginative
outputs about formal roles and idealistic prescriptions bout how public relations
should be practised ethically and effectively. But we know virtually nothing about
public relations work-styles, life-styles and practice cultures, or practitioners’
engagement with local cultures and meaning-creation activities and impacts within
them” (L’Etang, 2011, p. 16).
Sievert and Porter (2009) contributed a useful new concept with their call
for a “global dashboard” to help in navigation of international PR practice, and
Hodges (2006) and Schoenenberger-Orgad (2009) have similarly added some helpful
contemporary terminology to the mix with their characterisation of twenty-first century
“international” PR professionals as cultural mediators, or cultural intermediaries, building
on tentative suggestions first made by Muzi Falconi (2006).
The above authors are some of the major contributors to a nascent but steadily
growing realm of “intercultural” PR and corporate communication study, which has
begun to emerge around the world, with clear implications for scholarship and practice
in the Asian region. In the present paper I will observe the South East Asia region,
 where I will focus particularly on a number of specific environmental variables Corporate
going “beyond culture”. communication
This study operating
This research takes a constructivist and inductive approach, gathering information environments
about how practitioners perceive their own working world and its challenges and
driving forces. In framing these exploratory questions, the author has, however, 361
taken some account of a range of theoretical perspectives including Grunig’s (1992)
Excellence Theory of PR practice, Goffman (1981) “dramaturgy” theory of communication,
Hofstede’s (2001) dimensions of culture, the five “environmental” variables identified
by Vercic et al. (1996), and the work of a range of other critical, political and social
theorists. The study has also been informed, in a general sense, by the calls of
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researchers including Pal and Dutta (2008) for more account to be taken of potential
“post-colonial” background influences on professional communication practice in
developing countries, and L’Etang (2011) for scholars to show more willingness to
explore the varied worlds of communication practitioners in different locations in
a more open way, with less tendency to view phenomena only through the limiting
prism of existing, western-oriented, organisationally focused PR theory.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire sought to reach active practitioners in six member countries
of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN): Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Four ASEAN member countries were
not included: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar (Burma), primarily for reasons
relating to their undeveloped PR sectors and/or unique national circumstances making
comparisons with other nations of the region too problematic.
An online questionnaire was distributed to 100 PR and corporate communication
practitioners across the six chosen countries, from November 2010 to January 2011.
These participants were purposively identified, primarily from the membership lists of
the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) and the International
Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in the six countries under study,
with some additional participants identified through “snowballing” technique. Survey
respondents were asked more than 30 questions covering a wide range of topics
including culture, the influence of local politics, gender issues, local media situations,
their professional and educational backgrounds, what they saw as the major influences
upon their work, their countries of origin, their awareness of PR and cultural
comparison studies of various kinds, and other topics. Following the collection of
quantitative data on these matters, subsequent interviews with 14 practitioners across
the region sought to flesh out the quantitative data with more open-ended questions
seeking deeper qualitative insights.
Participants were purposively identified as being individuals likely to have
sufficient professional knowledge, experience and breadth of perspective to make
a substantial contribution to the study.

Interviews
A series of 14 in-depth, semi-structured interviews was conducted across all six
nations, with some interviewees reporting that their professional responsibilities
extended across two or more countries of the region. Participants in the interview stage
were purposively identified, as people known to (or otherwise recommended to) the
 CCIJ author as experienced and continuing practitioners within their country (or countries)
19,4 of operation. To the extent possible, questions were framed to be open-ended and free
of inference as to any “correct” answers expected, other than direct factual responses
sought about place of birth, age and so on. The data were analysed according to
common themes of opinions, as adapted from the Grounded Theory Method of Strauss
and Corbin.
362
A practitioner’s eye view: neglected “dimensions of difference”
At the quantitative survey stage, some interesting but perhaps not entirely surprising
general perspectives were revealed. For example, when asked whether or not culture
could be an important consideration in developing effective communication strategies
in their locations, all 30 respondents (100 per cent) replied in the affirmative. When
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asked whether American and European PR experiences and case studies were valid to
use as the basis for planning in their own locations, a striking 76.7 per cent were
prepared to venture only as far as to say “sometimes” – with many volunteering
comments as to the limitations of applying PR thinking borrowed from elsewhere. Ten
per cent saw foreign approaches as never being valid. More than 83 per cent judged it
to be important to have specific local knowledge of a country to achieve success in
communication campaigns within its borders. Nearly 83 per cent reported that in their
personal experience some PR methods and techniques worked better in certain Asian
locations than in others. More than 62 per cent reported that considerations around
politics were sometimes a “major factor” in deciding what work they would or would
not take on.
The elucidation of practitioner views that emerged during the later qualitative
interviews provided more revealing, in-depth insights. It may be going too far to
suggest that any of the concerns and issues highlighted by local practitioners are just
being “discovered”, in any literal sense, but it might reasonably be asserted that the
level of explicit recognition and discussion these factors attract in PR and corporate
communication circles remains very limited to date. Scholarly work on these
factors has been similarly sparse. On that basis, they merit greater exposure and
discussion now.

Differences in communication infrastructure and development

Bearing in mind wide differences from country to country in access to communication
technologies, as well as possible differences in local communication habits, practitioners
were asked how relevant such “infrastructure” factors were to decisions they made
about PR strategies and tactics. Nearly 70 per cent of survey respondents reported these
factors as being “very relevant”, and a major factor in their decision making. More than
30 per cent saw them as sometimes relevant. Not a single respondent saw these factors as
never being relevant, in the context of their own country.
One point that emerged strongly during subsequent interviews is the extent of
consideration South East Asian practitioners say they must give to such differences in
communication infrastructure levels, especially computer and internet access and
mobile telephone networks. Beyond the question of sheer accessibility, the matter of
local communication habits loomed large as well – an aspect that goes beyond what
people can access to consider also what they prefer to access.
One Indonesian practitioner, for example, emphasised some distinctive
characteristics of the Indonesian technology scene. While he said only 14 per cent of
the total population of around 250 million had internet access, 67 per cent had access to
 mobile phones – and with the rapid growth of smartphones amongst these, this meant Corporate
the major growth in internet usage was coming primarily from people using hand-held communication
devices rather than computers sitting on desks. This had many practical implications
for practitioners planning outreach activities, including those around content design operating
and screen display issues. environments
The short message SMS format was reported to be especially appealing in the
Indonesian context, partly because of the particular intensity and frequency of day-to-day 363
chatting routines amongst friends in Indonesian society – arguably even more so than in
many other societies – but also because of the structure of the national language, Bahasa
Indonesia, which tends to structure statements naturally into short conversational
chunks. Other aspects of Indonesian lifestyle were said to favour the popularity of social
media interaction as well. In the words of another Jakarta practitioner, who noted that the
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problems of severe traffic congestion often made it difficult for friends to gather across
town as often as they might want: “There’s something about Indonesian culture. People
like to gather, have coffee and gossip. (But) this is very conducive to much of the social
media experience too”. The implication was that cyber-contact was helping simulate a
kind of contact traditionally valued in their society, but now under strain given the
growing pressures of the modern urban environment. This practitioner noted that one of
the more interesting characteristics of the Indonesian scene in recent years had been the
exceptionally popularity of the Blackberry smartphone. One key reason, he felt, was its
“group discussion” feature allowing for conversation between several people at once – a
particularly appealing feature for economic reasons, keeping down the cost of staying in
touch with friends and family – as well as for the “virtual gathering” that it made possible
amongst groups of friends. “People will ask ‘What is your (Blackberry) PIN number?’ It’s
often more important (in Indonesia) than your phone number”.
Other interviewees gave distinctive examples about communication practices and
customs and how these linked to technology access in each of the six countries
surveyed. Their comments highlighted not just some country-by-country differences in
favoured forms of interaction, but also differences at the provincial level on occasion.
The stated reasons for this appear to be multifaceted; partly about incomes, partly
about unevenness in infrastructure, partly about issues of local dialect, accents or local
lifestyles, sometimes partly about other distinctive one-off factors (e.g. the apparent
Indonesian urban love affair with the Blackberry, which can make it a powerful
campaign response tool in that location). Issues of this nature are arguably less
significant when PR campaigns seek only to target the “low-hanging fruit” of major
capital cities, but based on the weight of interviewees’ comments in this realm, its
significance may rise considerably as the imperative increases to reach more of the
total population beyond the biggest cities.
One interviewee highlighted the importance of considering other, less commonly
discussed, dimensions of infrastructure as well: for example, she had found it easy to
achieve journalist attendance at major media events staged in Singapore, but
sometimes much less success staging identical events in India, even when the subject
matter appeared equally appealing in each location. Upon inquiry, she had learned that
local transport conditions, including traffic congestion, distances to travel and
limitations in public transport had proved to be critical variables. But her multinational
employer often did not take enough account of this in planning local promotions, or in
evaluating relative outcomes in different places.
Broadly, most interviewees confirmed that a growing taste for instant two-way
dialogue is as apparent in South East Asia as it is elsewhere in the world, with many
 CCIJ populations rapidly leap-frogging over stages of technological development
19,4 experienced over a much longer period in western countries. Some practitioners
especially noted the phenomenon of vast numbers of local citizens, in many cases with
limited formal education and no previous ownership of any land-based telephone or
desktop computer, moving directly into the purchase of internet-enabled smartphones
in recent times, suddenly able to access and respond to multiple sources of information
364 in ways not previously experienced. The subtler implications of such social and
technological change for communication practitioners in the region, for governments
and for others conducting communication programmes of various are perhaps only
just beginning to be considered.
This new research broadly confirms the contention made by Sriramesh and Vercic
(2001) that “the level of development of a country’s infrastructure such as the
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communications technology vastly influences a practitioner’s ability to plan and

implement a campaign” (p. 106). But the research also indicates that practitioners
themselves see the state of affairs to be in considerable flux across South East Asia,
with a level of variability across the region that makes generalisation about “do’s and
don’ts” for practitioners quite difficult.

Linguistic issues
Several interviewees drew attention to the fact that effective communication efforts do
not depend just on cultural awareness and knowledge of local conditions. At a more
fundamental level, the composition and structure of local language itself need to be
considered. One interviewee, for example, commented that the national language of
Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia, is built more strongly on oral tradition than literary
tradition, and that this has important implications for the effectiveness of materials
produced in writing for local audiences. Simple translation of corporate communication
documents from English into Indonesian could produce disappointing results amongst
targeted readers, if no other adjustments were made to mode of delivery or other
tactics, he argued. Moreover, most Indonesians were typically “not direct in what they
say [y] someone who is Javanese can take more time to convey their message than,
say, someone from Medan [y] In PR you are expected to give presentations, and
provide lots of notes for reading. But you don’t grow up in our culture doing that very
much. For things like annual reports and briefings this can present problems”.
Going further, some interviewees alluded to the diversity of languages spoken
within individual countries of South East Asia – and the distinctive qualities of each –
and the fact that this also received scant attention in PR literature. Again taking
Indonesia as an example, hundreds of languages are known to be spoken across the
diverse archipelago, with the largest being Javanese, spoken by around 100 million
people (Robson, 2004) on the island of Java. While hard to quantify, anecdotal
indications are that a large proportion of people in Java remain more fluent in Javanese
than in the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Further afield, on other islands,
language use appears similarly fragmented. While local communication practitioners
appreciate this fully (and know that education and literacy levels in the national
language vary widely even across Java, let alone more widely across the far-flung
archipelago), anecdotal indications are that multinationals coming into Indonesia and
other countries of the region often show scant understanding of the dimensions of the
issue, and its implications in corporate communication terms.
Overall, the perspective that emerges from practitioner interviews across
the region is that language use is a matter which needs to be approached
 deliberately and with careful forethought – not only taking account of what Corporate
language can be understood by a particular target public, but sometimes also what communication
will be the most effective, respectful and appropriate use of language and mode of
delivery in each situation, given the complex considerations of education levels, operating
differences in dialect, local cultural, religious and political sensitivities, and environments
other factors which might be less self-evident than they first appear to an outsider.
Often the choice of language/s and mode/s of delivery is simple and unproblematic, 365
the interviews suggest, but at other times less so than it might first appear to
an outsider.

Education
From practitioner interviews, two issues emerged prominently in regard to education.
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One relates to education in general, and how the work of communication practitioners
can sometimes be complicated by the huge diversity in education levels within nations
and across the region as a whole. The second relates to education for the profession
itself, and the fact that many practitioners in the region evidently struggle to see the
relevance of formal communication and PR education to success, performance and
advancement in their own careers.
To take the first of these issues, interviewees across the region – especially in
Thailand and Indonesia – commented upon the challenge to practitioners seeking to
develop and execute programmes to reach communities with widely varying education
levels, and consequently different lifestyles and media habits. Particular mention was
made of the urban-rural divide in Thailand, with development and education levels
seen to be becoming even more uneven over time. In the words of one Thai practitioner:
“Thailand still has a technology divide. Remote provinces are very different to the city
areas. You have to target audiences carefully – if your target is in a remote area you
can’t use the same channels”. In Indonesia, comment was made not just on the urban-
rural divide but the massive divide to be found even within the national capital. As one
Jakarta practitioner observed: “Jakarta is a city of 14 million people – less than 10% are
university graduates”. (By way of comparison, the proportion of graduates in the
population of inner London is 60 per cent; in outer London it is 45 per cent; BBC, 2013.)
Clearly, such issues may have little relevance to a marketing communication
programme for branding of luxury goods, but for a public health campaign, or a
campaign seeking to target emerging new groups of aspirational consumers perhaps
enjoying their family’s first generation of discretional spending, the question of how to
factor in these education and literacy variations is an important one both at a strategic
and a tactical level.
When it comes down to the much more particular matter of education for PR and
corporate communication practitioners, regional practitioners tended to be, at best,
only mildly supportive of the extent to which formal PR and communication studies
prepare a person well for practice in the region – and at worst, were quite dismissive.
A typical mid-range interviewee comment was that much PR and communications
theory tended to be unnecessarily complex (“very involved” in the words of one
Singapore CEO), with “a lot of it [y] backward looking rather than forward looking”.
The strong inference which can be drawn from practitioner comments about
professional education is that not many have a strong knowledge of academic
theory related to their profession, and even amongst those who do, there is, generally
speaking, little evident enthusiasm for its claims to relevance and currency in
their world.
 CCIJ Media systems
19,4 At the survey stage, more than 72 per cent of respondents reported that they felt the
media environment in which they operated was substantially different to that which
applied in western countries. Almost 28 per cent reported it as being different in some
respects only. Nobody was willing to contend there are no differences. When asked
what the biggest single difference was, an overwhelming 84 per cent nominated “level
366 of government control” as the foremost factor, with a range of other differences
reported at lower levels of significance.
When interviewed, most practitioners volunteered comments regarding the
distinctive features of their local media scenes. These frequently related to local
ownership patterns, and in particular the multiple commercial interests of local media
owners. Another frequently commented-upon feature was the perceived closeness of
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major media owners to governments (most notably of all Malaysia), and even full
ownership and control of major parts of the media by government interests (most
notably Vietnam and Singapore). More vigorous and freely critical media were
reported to exist in Thailand and the Philippines, though still not without important
areas of delicacy, which practitioners needed to bear in mind when mounting
campaigns which had public sector or public policy implications.
From Manila, one successful agency proprietor conceded that he needed to take
careful account of local media characteristics at all times: “In a country like Singapore
one’s options for PR campaigns are probably limited because of their censorship or
control the government has over the media. Here it’s easier to have access to the media
and get coverage for ideas”. But he identified ethics as a continuing stumbling block
in Filipino media relations, particularly in political PR and most especially with
the practice of so-called “envelopmental journalism” (bribes to journalists) still
prevailing in some quarters. He nominated “show business” as a media sector in which
such “envelopmental journalism” remained rife. Existing PR theory appears mute
on these realities.
Broadly, interviewees tended to focus on aspects of greater or lesser journalistic
freedom, ownership issues, the extent of government ownership and direct or indirect
control, the extent of ethnic audience segmentation within particular countries
(especially Malaysia) and the shifting relationship between traditional mainstream
media and rapidly evolving social online media channels which local authorities
(in some locations) sometimes sought to stifle or discourage. While all countries
were said to exhibit some similar themes and issues on occasion, it is noteworthy
that practitioners also report each nation having distinct features of its own which
can have important bearings on how best to approach particular kinds of campaigns
and programmes.
Beyond their instrumental value, these findings about local media help elucidate
and validate observations previously made by other researchers, notably Pal and
Dutta (2008), in regard to the importance of recognising patterns of power, ideology
and hegemony – both local and global – when studying the interaction of PR and
media and other institutions in developing countries.

Politics
Politics featured strongly in the accounts of local practitioners, confirming earlier
contentions by researchers including Vercic et al. (1996), Sriramesh (2004) and others
which suggest that the implicit assumption PR practitioners typically operate within
a free contest of ideas, in a “marketplace of opinions”, so to speak, may have severe
 limitations within countries exhibiting political characteristics which depart from a Corporate
western-liberal model. communication
More than 62 per cent of survey respondents reported political sensitivities to be
sometimes a major consideration for them in making decisions about their work, with operating
17 per cent saying it was a frequent consideration. “Fear of offending authorities” was environments
the most frequently expressed reason for such concern (by 54 per cent).
The steady rise of online social media and its ability to cut through censorship 367
attracted comment from interviewees across the region, mainly of a positive nature.
Without entering into debate about the rights and wrongs of any of the phenomena
observed by respondents in regard to the political environments in which they operate,
it does seem clear that current “international” PR theory may be yet to fully
accommodate the depth and importance of these distinctive political and media system
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realities and their impact on countries of the region, notwithstanding the fact they have
been noted in passing in years gone by (Vercic et al.,1996; Bardhan, 2011).
In turn, this raises questions about the adequacy and relevance of what is still being
taught in the academy to aspiring graduates of PR and other communication disciplines
within the region – and what is being taught about the region to practitioners and those
who engage them from outside. Frameworks such as Grunig’s (1992) “Excellence Theory”
and its derivatives are silent on such matters, while those who have more recently
advocated broader socio-critical frameworks – such as Hodges (2006), Pal and Dutta (2008)
and L’Etang (2011) – have yet to flesh out their ideas with much empirical data. One might
suggest there are still major gaps in information and perspective remaining to be closed in
the region. Overall, the contributions made by regional practitioners to his study can be
seen to be a modest yet useful contribution to rectifying this state of affairs.

Other factors
Some other issues which were also the subject of spirited interviewee commentary
include: concepts of ethical conduct and the extent to which ethical responsibilities
may be defined somewhat differently in different cultural contexts in the region;
occasional dissonance between the values of practitioners and their employers, clients
and even target publics on occasion; high levels of scepticism about the relevance,
performance and value of professional associations when viewed in a South East Asian
context; and the incidence of some intriguing levels of subtlety and nuance around
gender relationships in the profession.

Conclusions
The research confirms that a greater understanding of local and regional circumstances
may be critical to achieving truly effective professional communication practice in the
region. Most interviewees were able to volunteer wide-ranging and colourful anecdotes to
demonstrate aspects of this from their own direct experience. Aside from any contribution
such commentaries and stories may make to the ongoing formation of theory, I believe
the perspectives revealed by interviewees also help, in the words of L’Etang (2011), to
“produce multiple interpretations of practice, tell currently untold stories, and generally
contribute multi-layered insights into the practice” (p. 18).
Beyond those contributions, the research sheds further light on a range of specific
“dimensions of difference” which go beyond the more commonly discussed matters of
cultural “values” and “attitudes”. In one of the most rapidly developing and populous
regions of the world, becoming increasingly influential on the world stage, broader
acknowledgement of such issues and their potential impacts on professional
 CCIJ communication practice grow increasingly important. While scholars must beware of
19,4 exaggerating perceived gaps between theory and practice – as Van Ruler (2005) noted
in an aptly-titled PR paper, Professionals are from Venus, Scholars are from Mars – a
better and more explicit reconciliation between current theory and the lived experience
of contemporary practice nevertheless does seem warranted, particularly in complex,
divergent and sometimes contradictory operating environments such as those which
368 exist in South East Asia – often resisting neat categorisation into existing theoretical
constructs developed in the west.
As one interviewee in Singapore succinctly put it: “My global organisation
colleagues do not always understand [y] Many of them think it (Asia) is just a cluster
of countries, but don’t realise quite how different these countries are”. It seems clear
from this research that many local practitioners see such differences going well beyond
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matters of local attitude, values and ethnicity – important as such matters may be on
occasion – and stretch into some fascinating other dimensions of local distinctiveness
as well; dimensions which practitioners believe can matter considerably to their work.
Global professional bodies and “international” communication scholars may benefit
from hearing these previously unheard perspectives, and may ultimately be able to use
them to fuel the development of more inclusive and nuanced theories around global
professional practice, better reflecting the complex realities of this region and of an
increasingly multi-polar twenty-first century world.

Limitations to study
This study is limited by relatively small sample size, and by the conduct of all research
in English, primarily amongst members of two major professional associations: the
IPRA, and the IABC. This may have implications for the general applicability of views
expressed by communication practitioners across the six countries surveyed.

Further research
Further research is indicated into practitioner worldviews and environmental
conditions in all countries of the region, with particular reference to “dimensions
of difference” that have been insufficiently explored in earlier PR research.
More exploration is particularly warranted into the practical relevance and
adequacy of existing academic PR theory in South East Asian social contexts. It is
suggested that the adoption of more openly exploratory approaches to research,
including anthropological (ethnographic) techniques which might produce richer
insights, and inclusion of a range of broader perspectives including historical and post-
colonial dimensions, into the framing of future regional research, may also prove
fruitful. In the author’s view, such further research, combined with a continuation of
more customary organisationally focused instrumental PR research in the region, will
produce a more well-rounded understanding of the PR and corporate communication
professions and their actual and potential roles in the region.
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About the author

Graeme William Domm has worked in journalism, government and corporate public relations
roles for more than 30 years. He has taught in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam, and has most
recently been employed in senior academic and communication management roles for the RMIT
University, in both Australia and Vietnam. He currently teaches postgraduate students in the
University of Melbourne’s Master of Global Media Communication. Graeme William Domm can
be contacted at: [email protected]

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