Anniversary retrospective, perspective and prospective of corporate public affairs: moving from the 2000+ PA Model toward Public Affairs 2.0

Abstract

The anniversary issue of the Journal of Public Affairs is an appropriate time to reflect on decades of developments in the public affairs field and to put ideas into perspective. In this article, I revisit the paper I wrote for the first edition of this journal in which I tried to describe the state of the art of US public affairs practice under the rubric of the 2000+ PA Model as it existed at the start of the last decade (2001–2010). Much of what was envisioned came to pass, although some elements in greater or lesser fashion will be described. I also provide some perspective on how the PA state of the art will unfold in the current decade (2011–2020), using a model I characterize as Public Affairs 2.0. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Over a decade ago, I wrote an article for the inaugural issue of this journal entitled ‘Emerging U.S. Public Affairs Practice: The 2000+ PA Model’ (Fleisher, 2001). In that piece, I tried to describe the driving forces and trends that I expected might impact practice in the 2001–2010 period. I also proceeded to outline seven elements that I believed would characterize the best public affairs operations during what is now the immediate past decade.

As a keen observer of corporate public affairs phenomenon for over three decades and having been described somewhat recently as a ‘generation straddler’ among scholars in this field (Allen, 2005, p. 9), this anniversary edition strikes me as an auspicious time to both look back at public affairs developments of the prior decade as well as ahead at ones I anticipate will occur in the unfolding one (i.e., 2011–2020). I called the developing model I envisioned back in the very first edition of the Journal of Public Affairs the 2000+ PA Model but have labeled the model I see unfolding over the present decade Public Affairs 2.0 (aka, PA2.0).

LOOKING IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR AT THE LAST DECADE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

In the 2001 article, I noted how I had observed a shift in practice away from ‘traditional’ public affairs (PA) practices toward a ‘new’ model that I expected would be most prominent in the coming decade (i.e., 2001–10). I suggested this shift had been catalyzed by half a dozen internal and external trends, or more specifically—driving forces, that had been impacting practice. As an effective strategic management response to these driving forces, I offered seven prescriptions for practicing what I described back then as the ‘new PA’. The prescriptions were summarized as follows:

1. Manages PA as an ongoing, year-round process both internally and externally.
2. Cultivates and harvests the capability to build, develop, and maintain enduring stakeholder relationships.
3. Influences stakeholders using refined information (i.e., intelligence).
4. Recognizes the importance of managing the grassroots.
5. Communicates in an integrated manner.
6. Continuously aligns its values and strategy with the public's interests.
7. Improves its external relations using the accepted facets of contemporary management practice.

My foresight and prediction skills, like many keen observers, have room for improvement; nevertheless, let me review these items and see if they were of value and might still be present in contemporary practice. In the following section, I will make some observations on (a) what I had predicted would happen in the ‘new’ PA organization of the 2001–2010 period; (b) reflect upon what transpired during the prior decade (2001–2010), (c) identify what elements I had better foresight of and those that I missed; and (d) extend these observations into the 2011–2020 period with current observations and insights that I think are or will be prominent in PA practice in the period of the second 10-year anniversary of this journal.

1. Manages PA as an ongoing, year-round process both internally and externally.

   A decade ago, I had described the new PA as being more than just reactive or crisis responsive and instead relying upon a deep and institutionalized organizational issues understanding that resided both within the PA apparatus as well as being widely distributed outside of it. I suggested PA matters would be fed out into the executive, operations, and the line, becoming something that everybody in the organization remains sensitive toward. This same public policy environmental sensitivity should also have extended and applied to the organization's many partners in the public policy management process including its contracted agencies, associations, coalition partners, communicators, and consultants. Last but certainly not least, the new PA organization would have been future focused. It should have regularly tried to discern how future issues would impact the organization and engaged in at least periodic strategic thinking around possible alternative futures and issue scenarios (Albrecht, 2000).

   Today's PA practice has continued to evolve in relative importance from the one I witnessed over a decade ago (McGrath et al., 2010). Public policy institutions and processes have remained powerful influencers of the corporate playing pitch and often are the catalysts for so-called ‘un-leveled’ business playing fields. In other words, the public policy arena remains an important arena in which competitive advantage may be achieved. Witness over the last decade any number of approved or disapproved mergers and acquisitions, unique content requirements, unusual safety standards, or tightened governance policies. Public policy institutions still matter to senior executives and their organizations' potential success.

   Stakeholders have also demonstrated time and time again that they will actively seek to protect or enhance their claims in the public policy arena. The most effective stakeholders realize that they are most influential at moving their causes by being active throughout the year as opposed to just the periods around elections or voting. This is at least in part because most politicians or elected officials act year-round in doing those things to both please their constituents and also to position themselves to get enough votes to win their next election. As such, more organizations than ever have ensconced PA processes within their strategic decision-making processes, and more PA practitioners have become trusted members in, or at least advisors to, their top management teams.

   Nevertheless, too many organizations, particularly small to medium-sized ones or those in newly developing yet fast-growing product/service markets, tend to overlook the importance of managing PA on a continual basis. There are still many examples of organizations that recognize the ‘ostrich’ approach to hiding from these issues can only suffice for a limited time. Companies like Facebook and Google had remarkable rates of initial growth but became increasingly restrained in their growth trajectory when PA matters like privacy issues and organized stakeholders grew in prominence for them. These are examples of companies that ‘came late to the PA table’ and probably would have been better served in the long run by having paid closer attention to and investing more resources in PA before they became a central issues target of concerned stakeholder groups.

2. Cultivates and harvests the capability to build, develop, and maintain enduring stakeholder relationships.

   My anticipation was that much corporate PA activity would have been characterized by a community investment approach in which corporate resources would be deemed relevant to the long-term improvement of the organization's various communities (Burke, 1998). Stakeholders would no longer be viewed only as constraints or threats but also as opportunities (Baron, 1995). The new 2000+ PA model organizations should have replaced the historically utilized combative stakeholder approaches with consensus building and seeking methods.

   Companies made major inroads during 2001–2010 in managing their stakeholder relationships. This last decade saw the publication of more stakeholder reports or their rough equivalents, more permanent structures dedicated to stakeholder dialogue ranging from continuing committees of the board of directors to permanent quasi-public/private groups dedicated to addressing shared issues, and many other new forms of stakeholder dialogue in between. Some companies have even appointed individuals with ‘stakeholder’ in their official titles, and even a small smattering of ‘Chief Stakeholder Officers’ made their first appearances.

   Despite the great deal of progress made in recognizing the importance of stakeholders over the past few decades, there are still several areas of stakeholder management that have room for improvement (Carroll, 2005). Much of this will need to be driven by educational institutions as opposed to those in the line of fire or associations who are well served to organize meetings but are not as adept in developing the body of knowledge needed to better perform stakeholder management.

   Professional development in this critical area still remains largely under-developed. Although more MBA programs offer modules in stakeholder management and relations, most of these are still just small and relatively insignificant parts of other functional subject matter areas. Scholarly research, which really took off in management after the publication of the book by Freeman (1984) ‘Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach’, has remained somewhat on the periphery. Even the scholarly groups that would have been most likely to have promoted its development like the Social Issues in Management division of the Academy of Management, International Association of Business and Society, and a few other academic associations have probably reached their watermarks in devoting more attention to it. Many managers and executives probably perceive that its cursory treatment in MBA and executive programs indicates its relative importance. As such, it remains relatively low on executive management priority lists. This is an area that still gets more ‘lip service’ than continuing and dedicated professional development offerings.

3. Influences stakeholders using refined information (i.e., intelligence).

   I had expected the new PA organizations of 2001–2010 to use their financial resources in more extended ways than in just using it for lobbying or supporting their political action committee (PACs). I had been concerned that stakeholders were growing increasingly wary of companies that were viewed as ‘throwing money at problems’ and expected astute new model PA practitioners to recognize that influence increasingly comes in the form of growing intelligence, networks, employment, and knowledge resources. In other words, companies successful in PA would be better able to communicate how their resources not only generated profits but also enhanced a wider range of societal benefits. I also expected that over-worked and often over-whelmed elected officials and other public policy makers were likely to aggressively call on corporations to help them out in relevant public policy matters. Organizations that were seen as assisting decision makers by delivering knowledge and related inputs that add value to public decision making processes and outputs (Griffin, 1999) would be both well received in their communities and more likely to be influential in the public policy arena.

   Sure enough, PA observers saw the rise of applications of Baron's concept of the 4Is, the Is standing for interests, institutions, issues, and intelligence (Baron, 1995). Intelligence in this framework meant having actionable information about the relevant interests (i.e., stakeholders), issues, and institutions that would allow an organization unique insight into the resolution of a non-market matter (Baron, 1999). Intelligence usually involves internal PA officers systematically doing both primary and secondary research at the intersection of the 4Is.

   Research activities have continued to grow in prominence in most of the larger and more sophisticated multinational PA offices. There is far greater use today of networks for research, both in the newer digital as well as more traditional personal domains. Research processes themselves have become more sophisticated and real time for many PA shops as the emphasis on developing intelligence has grown in prominence during the 2001–2010 period.

4. Recognizes the importance of managing the grassroots.

   In my original paper, I noted how ‘main street’ was becoming more important than Washington's K-street in the development of effective public policy (Mack, 1997). Although there remains some public skepticism about whether politicians ensconced in the relative isolation of their capitals actually understand the challenges faced by their constituents in their local communities. Showing the impacts of organizational or public policy on the home electorate still carries more weight than how it impacts matters within the beltway (i.e., the ring of highways that encircles or surrounds the political establishment and core public policy institutions of Washington, DC). Grassroots activities is a form of political involvement that involves the so-called ‘ordinary’ members of a community rather than individuals who are members of the established political groups. Working the grassroots is frequently a mainstay campaign element in USA.

   The grassroots become even more prominent in local PA efforts as one of the best tools by which to communicate with the voters.The grassroots are normally used to support and supplement traditional access-based lobbying; however, these efforts must be real grassroots and authentic, not inauthentic, instant or manufactured ‘Astroturf’ campaigns. Developing genuine support for an issue is significantly different than when ‘front groups’ intentionally manipulate uninformed persons to create the appearance of support. Approaches that rely upon misinformation, deception, intimidation, or bullying tactics of what PA guru Ed Grefe terms the ‘family’ or ‘friend’ stakeholder categories are both ineffective and long-term damaging to those organizations using them (Grefe and Linsky, 1996). Additionally, approaches that rely on groups using impersonal email lists or petitions, whereby most signers are unaware and uninformed of what they are actually supporting, have also created net damage to both the political system and also to those associations, corporations, political interests, PR firms, and other politically active organizations who were found to have funded and originated these efforts (Sourcewatch, ).

   I would expect to see more use of the grassroots in the coming decade, as well as more unfortunate and ill-advised use of manufactured grassroots as well. These Astroturf grassroots efforts, in particular, will be fertilized by the ease of organizing groups via social media. It is very convenient and too tempting to some groups not to wander into public policy debates via Twitter, Facebook, corporate blogs, Wikis, and like channels. Nevertheless, organizations and public policy makers alike who participate via these channels will increasingly come to recognize that they will require an equal, if not even higher, level of differentiated PA communications competence as the more traditional channels augur.

   I would be remiss to overlook the continuing importance of grass-tops efforts, whereby decision makers, executives, board members, and other well-positioned individuals in organizations are organized to help their companies address public policy concerns. These continue to be part and parcel of the common PA toolkit and will increasingly utilize social media with increasing sophistication and understanding in this coming decade. The key to making this work though will be ensuring that a wider range of corporate executives are acclimatized, sensitive to, and trained to effectively relate with (i.e., relationship building of one's sociopolitical networks) and communicate in an ongoing manner with public policy makers. This is also a task that remains somewhat under-developed and under-appreciated across many multinational and smaller enterprises.

5. Communicates in an integrated manner.

   I had suggested in the original article that external communications in the new PA model was going to be more research based, less rivalrous (e.g., ‘if our organization wants a stakeholders' opinion—then we'll give it to them’), and more two-way symmetric in nature. PA officers in 2000–2010 would be persuasive and skilled verbal and visual presenters as opposed to just being skilled writers. Stakeholder communication was to be based on the ‘facts’ contained in empirical economic and social data and articulately presented in a trustworthy manner. Communication vehicles would increasingly be able to reach formerly unreached groups and do so in ways they preferred to be reached, even in cross-cultural or multi-lingual settings. I suggested that the capabilities of the full array of evolving and evolved communication technologies would be put to work on PA campaigns, empowering stakeholders to understand issues, know what they can do, and how they may take action. Finally, I expected decision makers would greatly extend their practice and know when to utilize consensus-building disciplines for resolving stakeholder disputes such as alternative dispute resolution methods (i.e., arbitration, mediation, mini trials, moderated settlement conferences) as opposed to having to rely mostly on litigation and other zero sum game legal processes (Susskind and Field, 1996).

   Some of these elements did play out during the last decade. Research was used more often in developing PA communication campaigns. However, there were still prominent examples where the research was used in a manipulative, one-directional manner to support the organization's original positions as opposed to modifying practices based on the research findings—the so-called ‘Damned Lies and Statistics’ phenomenon described by Best (2001). The manipulative use of research reached heights previously unseen over the last decade, particularly because so many individuals and groups were wont to use their own studies carried out over the Internet, using social media, and then report them as ‘truisms’. Unfortunately, many readers of these items lacked the knowledge and sophistication to determine the credibility, source bias, validity, or generalizability of this research. In the terms presented by Best (2001), there are still far more awestruck, cynical, and naive audience members than critical ones in these public policy debates.

   Additionally, I expected the integration of communication to seamlessly cut across functional groups such as corporate communications, government relations, marketing, PA, and public relations. There were some powerful examples of this cross-functional integration actually occurring. Unfortunately, my observation is that this full integration across these external-facing communication functions still remains among the minority of (corporate) PA campaigns. This is even more likely to be true when the campaign is targeted on an issue that has a heavy electoral, lobbying, or regulatory element associated with its resolution.

   The coming decade will see more public policy makers using social media in their daily activities; therefore, we can also expect the corresponding increased usage of these channels by PA practitioners and stakeholders, of integrated communications across the enlarged variety of media channels. New media will continue to grow in importance, particularly in the early stages of issue development, but traditional media like the press and broadcasting entities will continue to exert major long-term influence on the public policy process. There will be strong opportunities for achieving competitive advantage for those organizations whose PA capabilities include the 365 × 24 × 7 mastering of integrated communication across both traditional and new or social media channels. Last but not least, those organizations who can coordinate and manage their public policy communication efforts across their various own communications functions will have advantages over those organizations who keep communications located within functional silos.

6. Continuously aligns it values and strategy with the public's interests.

   I had considered the ability to be politically germane over time, whereby an organization is able to consistently align and adapt its policies and actions with the public's values (Freeman, 2000) to be a key indicator of whether the new PA model I had anticipated was actually in place. Where this alignment was continuously managed, the organization's reputation improves (Roberts and Dowling, 2002) and creates the context for the most effective managerial utilization of the entire range of PA tools (Showalter and Fleisher, 2005). Ethics and ethical sensitivity was expected to be prominent because understanding the organization's stakeholder relationships is critical in achieving harmony between the organization and its stakeholders (Wiedmann, 2006). Carried out properly, stakeholders were expected to come to trust the organization and know that it deserves to be a credible voice in the development of effective public policy.

   This was a continuous challenge for many organizations over the last decade. The problem was not in organizations generally lacking the commitment or desire to create the alignment I referred to but rather in effectively managing the constant tension between their own evolving global strategies and an often mutating public interest. Because of the rapid growth and stakeholder uptake of expanding new media channels, public attitudes, and opinions—the two key elements underlying the often imprecise aggregated set of values we call the ‘public interest’—would shift more rapidly, and often more unexpectedly, than in prior decades. This changed context often meant that organizations would have to take a far more proactive role in helping to shape the debate underlying the formation of public interest, a role that at least some prominent organizations had historically refrained from doing. It also meant that the organizations would have to be able to take a better pulse and monitoring of the shifting foundations of the public interest, a task that can require a level of research sophistication that some organizations still have not managed to achieve internally or were unwilling to outsource to external experts (i.e., agencies, consultants).

7. Improves its external relations using the accepted facets of contemporary management practice.

   I had envisioned the corporate PA practices during 2001–2010 to be strategic as opposed to tactical or technical. Being strategic, it is systematically and proactively focused on helping the organization compete more successfully in both the public policy and customer/client-facing marketplaces over the long-term (Heath, 2009). This model provided behavioral guidance to everyone throughout the organization. It is heavily management and policy oriented; planning and implementation of the political strategy rely primarily upon research and facts as opposed to instincts and opinions (Getz, 2001). Lastly, those PA officers who operated under the model exhibited an uncommon exhibition of dynamic strategic capabilities (Oliver and Holzinger, 2008), often enabling them to earn a place at the executive decision-making table by demonstrating how effective communication helps meets the organization's vision and goals.

   My observations would suggest that we did generally witness an improvement of the use of accepted facets of contemporary management in the practice of corporate PA. This occurred in the first place because more PA officers were exposed to business and management principles and scholarship (Foundation for Public Affairs, 2005). For example, more and more senior PA officers wielded management credentials like MBAs or attended specific executive development programs like the impressive residential institutes or similar high-level executive programs offered by The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, US-based Public Affairs Council (Washington, DC), Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, and Issues Management Council (Leesburg, VA). Although the typical MBA graduate would still be relatively naive about corporate PA, issue management, corporate communication, corporate citizenship, government relations, business and public policy, business–government relations, etc. relative to the well-established functional activities like accounting, finance, marketing, or operations, related concepts like CSR, corporate citizenship, ethics, and governance have made inroads and frequently interact with PA agendas. Much like the situation a decade ago, few institutions of higher education in North America offer undergraduate or graduate degree programs or even majors in corporate PA and even fewer have research chairs or institutes dedicated to the study of phenomenon within this subject matter area. Fortunately, the Journal of Public Affairs continues to publish and is entering its second decade with this issue, thereby passing a major milestone for the development or professionalization of any field of study.

   Despite some scattered and uneven progress having been made during 2001–2010, PA activity generally remains a peripheral element in the strategic management of most companies as we begin the second decade of the new millennium (Fleisher, 2010/2011). Few senior PA executives are noted as being critical to the performance of their organizations—exemplified in an important manner by relatively few being quoted in annual reports or offering comment at annual shareholder meetings. The best ones usually only get a seat at the decision-making table but rarely as central as one that the chief financial officer, marketing officer, or chief operating officer holds. Last but not least, top PA officers continue to have to work hard at gaining and maintaining prominence in many businesses' strategic planning efforts, as they generally do not have a ‘guaranteed’ spot at these strategic planning or decision-making tables.

WHAT WILL PUBLIC AFFAIRS 2.0 LOOK LIKE OVER 2011-2020?

Having looked back at what I described as the ‘new’ PA organization of the prior decade, I would like to project forward at what the ‘new’ PA operation, or what I will refer to as the Public Affairs or PA2.0 operation, will probably look like in this current decade (i.e., 2011–2020). The seven elements of the new PA identified in my prior article on this topic will all remain important to the current decade. Several of those elements remain an aspirational objective of many corporate PA teams, and organizations will be expected to continue seeking mastery of these seven areas; nevertheless, several other developments will also vie for their attention as Public Affairs 2.0 becomes pervasive during 2011–2020.

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  Builds, cultivates, and mobilizes the appropriate alliances and partnerships from amongst all of its networks.
  Organizations who ‘win’ in public policy battles are those who are ‘in’ with those who align with the group's and the public interests. Developing personal networks have always been important in government relations and lobbying activities; consequently, knowing the right individuals like the influential staffers in a key elected official's office could be the difference between moving policy in the desired direction or not. The networks that will be most valuable in the PA2.0 environment though will encompass a greater variety of parties: the organization's grassroots membership, association members, popular media persons, policy influentials, and both competitor (i.e., strange bed-fellows) and supportive organizations within the organization's industry. Those organizations that can collaborate with their traditional public policy critics, such as interest groups generally on the ‘other side of the fence’, will have advantages when moving forward with positions to their public policy makers. Indeed, being able to gain the occasional willingness of critics to support important organizational public policy positions will be a key skill for PA2.0 practitioners.
  These networks have become one of the most critical assets of effective public affairs 2.0 teams. They will require resources (i.e., human, informational, temporal, technical, and financial) to build, intelligence to activate and lead the needed issue alliances, collaborations and partnerships, and technology to optimize the delivery of targeted, multi-directional communications (i.e., calls to action, issue portals, PA-dedicated social media). This will also mean that organizations will face an ongoing challenge in attempting to communicate the value of investing still-scarce resources in (PA) assets that do not fit neatly in most chief executive officer's financial lexicon of balance sheets, income statements, and quarterly or annual results. Astute PA2.0 officers will liken these investments to financial vehicles like hedging, futures contracts, and risk management that these business executives more quickly discern.
• 9
  Understands the responsibilities of being a global citizen and applies their understanding locally.
  Even though international PA practice has never really become a discipline in its own right, most companies today must operate in a globalized context. North American companies will succeed most when they can actually do business with the 95% of customers who live outside of the USA, many of whom are becoming viable consumers of discretionary products and services. Nevertheless, there are still many stakeholders who oppose the seeming onslaught of this force, and there will be continuing opposition to free trade and globalization itself. For example, maintaining so-called ‘level playing fields’, achieving ‘fair’ access to new national markets, agreeing upon fair levels of tariffs or fees, and ownership arrangements will continue to be prominent for business in the present decade. Sometimes, organizations will be challenged to set up their PA operation in countries where the national cultures would find this activity ‘foreign’ (Harsanyi and Schmidt, 2012). As such, the public policy challenges inherent in expanding trade will remain vital to corporate interests, thereby providing PA officers ample opportunities to make a difference to their organizations.
  Because of this force, PA competencies will increasingly be an area in which all business executives must be familiar (Harsanyi, 2010). Effective public affairs 2.0 officers over 2011–2020 will display a set of competencies that would not have been necessary needed a decade or two ago in many of their organizations (Fleisher, 2003). They will be benefitted by the increasing research like that published in the Journal of Public Affairs and by specialist think tanks. Additional help will come from professional development attention being devoted to practicing PA in different nation-states and regions such as those being conducted under the auspices of, for example, the studies on managing PA in the EU, India, and China conducted by the Foundation for Public Affairs (Judd, 2008, 2009, 2010), The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs (2010), and/or PublicAffairsAsia (In House, 2011). Another promising development has been the fast growth of PA consultancies and advisory services, as well as technical information applications or solutions that can automate formerly inefficient, manual tasks. Specialist PA agencies will provide not only gainful employment to individuals who want to practice PA but also expertise and resources that will extend the reach of in-house PA teams of organizations who are needing to employ these resources.
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  Masters the evolving communication channels provided by digital and social media.
  Digital media has been increasing in its influence in shaping policy in most modern democracies. It is used by interests on all sides of policy matters for tracking issues and tracking the pulse of the public interest or specific publics, messaging out to stakeholders, encouraging financial donations, issuing ‘calls to action’, gathering intelligence, and for announcing events or meetings, among other things. As such, candidates, elected officials, politicians, policy makers, and their office staff members are recognizing its growing importance in carrying out their public responsibilities. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are allowing political stakeholders to reach audiences that used to be beyond their reach using the traditional media. Additionally, blogs, online surveys, Web pages, and wikis are allowing public officials to communicate with their constituencies in new ways, many of which are proving to be mutually beneficial. In many cases, social media are complimenting the traditional means of communication, although in others, it is supplanting them (EMRC, 2011).
  The Public Affairs 2.0 operation will be working to move today's present unidirectional communication (i.e., messaging out to audiences) into multi-directional conversations and dialogs. These practitioners will also spend many hours monitoring, tracking, and managing social media as a daily task. Although new media will continue to grow in prominence, traditional media remain important for moving trends in the long run and PA2.0 practitioners will not lose sight of the need to stay on top of those channels as well. Most importantly, the PA2.0 practitioner will be able to move both strategically and tactically between the new social and traditional media channels in order to maximize the likelihood that their messages are being effectively and efficiently communicated and achieving the desired organizational objectives.

CONCLUSION

The anniversary issue of the Journal of Public Affairs offered a great opportunity to see just how far PA has progressed since the onset of this publication in 2001. Few contemporary business managers or executives would disagree with the view that PA remains an important managerial endeavor. Indeed, a number of developments over this journal's first decade have enabled the field to continue making progress toward the promise that many observers had suggested of it three or four decades ago. Yet, there remains more work to be done to establish the field with the same credibility that other managerial functions have achieved.

The onset of the PA2.0 model may be the catalyst that PA practitioners and operations need to gain the desired levels of organizational recognition. For this to happen, practitioners will need to expand their skills, knowledge, experiences, and abilities into new global locations and social media realms. Research and scholarship will need to continue expanding faster and further, along with professional development opportunities. Last but not least, the growth of PA advisors, consultants, and PA agencies, along with new information applications and solutions, should enable PA2.0 to be a difference maker among organizations during 2011–2020.

Biography

• Dr Craig S. Fleisher is Chief Learning Officer, Aurora WDC, Madison, Wisconsin (USA), graduate MScom faculty member of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (CH), and Docent, Business Information Management, Tampere University of Technology, Finland. An Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Affairs responsible for North America, he is a former Dean, MBA director, area head, university and endowed research chair holder, and has been a member of university faculties in Australia (Sydney and Western Sydney), Canada (Calgary, Wilfrid Laurier, New Brunswick and Windsor), New Zealand (Waikato), South Africa (Pretoria and Johannesburg), and the UK (Leicester School of Business). A recognized global expert who has helped many leading multinational companies and institutions improve their public affairs, performance measurement, and/or analysis processes, Craig has facilitated workshops or keynoted meetings in over 40 countries, supervised dozens of graduate theses, and is a regular recipient of executive and graduate teaching awards. Recognized as one of Canada's top MBA professors (2006) and university advisors (2008), he has been a former President of a national corporate public affairs association in Canada, co-editor with Dr Phil Harris of the Handbook of Public Affairs (Sage, 2005), authored the award-winning efforts Assessing, Managing and Maximizing Public Affairs Performance and Public Affairs Benchmarking (Public Affairs Council, 1997, 1995); is an editorial board member of Business & Society (SAGE) and the Canadian Journal of Public Relations and Communication (MSVU); and an academic board member of the European Center for Public Affairs (ECPA). Although he is internationally recognized for his work in strategy and consulting, he has a long-standing interest in and has also authored over 50 refereed papers and chapters on public affairs in refereed outlets such as the Journal of Public Affairs, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Communication Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Marketing Management, Public Relations Review, and Journal of Strategic Marketing, among others. He can be contacted at [e-mail].