The effects of cultural perceptions of public relations practitioners in academic organizations on public relations practices: Comparison of state and private universities in Turkey

Culture is important for organizations as a part of society. Because, communication system, culture and activities of an organization can not be seperated from social culture. There is a wide interaction between public relations and culture, because public relations is basically a communication event. So understanding cultural pressure how effects publicrelations department, allows prediction of applied communication orientations in organizations. Because social culture influence the organizational culture and the public relations models applied in organizations. Cultural dimensions (1984) Hofstede described, reveal how culture effects the individuals? communication and organizational activities. Because of this, when Hofstede?s cultural dimensions combined with Grunig and Hunt?s four public relations models, they complete the missing perspective in public relations activities. In this study, there is a survey conducted with managers of the public relationsdepartment of the universities in Turkey. Consequently, it has been found out that the public relations managers of the universities in Turkey have low power distance and high uncertainty avoidance level and they tend to individulasism and masculanity. There is no statistically significant relationship between dimensions and public relations models except powerdistance. When the power distance level increases, tendency to practice one-way public relations models increases, too. Although the public relations managers have low power distance level, they practice one-way public relations models. This can be a result of practitioners are not aware of the potential of public relations and management function of it and they continue to practice public relations activities in the frame of routine acitivities.