If so, what is a hard discipline? One that involves HUGEmoney or personal pain? One that absorbs all the general counsels time? Or, is it the blinding success of a brand new business or, maybe, something that affects individual careers? Or must it simply employ clubs and brass knuckles?
I believe public relations is as hard as ANY discipline can get when it puts together for a business, non-profit, government agency or association, the resources and action planning needed to alter individual perception leading to changed behaviors among their most important outside audiences. When it goes on to help managers persuade those key folks to his or her way of thinking, then move them to take actions that allow their department, group, division or subsidiary to succeed, thats hard, real hard.
Since, plain and simple, that can mean success or failure for the organization, yes, Id call it a very hard discipline indeed!
And that notion isnt just sitting out there all by itself. Its foundation is the underlying premise of public relationsitself: People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something...