eBusiness Weekly
Dr Musekiwa Clinton Tapera
Public Relations practitioners are at the centre of driving change based on credible authentic information from the environment. They are well positioned to arrest entropy of decay.
Entropy or decay, disorder, decline, deterioration, uncertainty and lack of predictability affects all aspects of our daily lives. If left unchecked, disorder increases over time. Energy disperses and systems dissolve into chaos.
The more disordered something is, the more entropic it becomes. Entropy started as a thermodynamics phenomenon but is now applicable in business, economics, sociology and many other fields including public relations practice and marketing.
Entropy in this case is the general trend of the universe towards disorder and death. It points to the degree of disorder and uncertainty and decline in a system. It requires, intervention to rescue the situation.
It calls for a catalyst to revive, renew and reinvigorate it to get functional and kicking again. This process requires strategic thinking, proper diagnosis, situational analysis, anticipatory skills, environmental scanning, monitoring and scenario analysis.
To rescue the organisation from an entropic situation calls for PR professionals to have the pulse of the moment in terms of current information and trends. It requires people whose knowledge of world dynamics and trends is top notch.
The fast moving information super highway management must be a top level. These are strategic public relations practitioners who drive corporates.
They are the agents of change, agents of renewal of dying organisations by virtue of their proximity to valite-laden information that can change the fortunes organisations.
Their interaction with both the external and internal environment makes them a valuable asset to reinvigorate declining, and deteriorating businesses.
Their positioning, social capital prowess and closeness to the corridors of power in organisations can make them effective turn around strategists for corporate survival.
All things trend towards disorder, more specifically, the second law of thermodynamics the net entropy (degree of disorder of any isolated or closed system) will always increase or at least stay the same. (stagnant). This is an undesirable state of affairs for any investment and business generally.
Entropy in the Business World
Just as energy trend towards a less useful and more disordered state, so do business systems in general. Rearranging business systems and people into an ordered state requires an injection of outside and new energy. The ultimate purpose of life and human striving is survival, renewal and reinvigoration.
Therefore, to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order is a responsibility of strategic and well positioned and professionally groomed PR practitioners.
Entropy, decay decline or deterioration” occurs in every aspect of business (employees may forget training, lose enthusiasm, cut corners, ignore rules and policies, equipment breakdown, products may become outdated or less in demand.)
Even the best of intentions cannot prevent an entropic slide towards chaos, it is, therefore, imperative that successful business invest time and money to minimise entropy by providing regular staff training, good reporting of any issues, inspections, monitoring and evaluation of organisational systems and processes.
Anything less will mean almost inevitable problems and loss of potential revenue.
Without the necessary effort, a business will reach the point of maximum entropy and degeneration leading to bankruptcy and collapse.
Unlike in Science or Physics, the domain of entropy a business can reverse the impact of falling apart and break up.
Information is power communication is the tonic, social capital is an enabler of survival and relationships are the oil that lubricates systems back to functionally PR is at the epicentre of this renewal and reinvigoration.
Early warning signs, environmental scanning, impeding market threats entry of competitors, boardroom espionage, guerilla tactics and other orthodox strategies can be extracted from the environment and can leverage organisations against adversity.
Consequences of entropy are anarchy, discord, disarray, disorder, lawlessness, turmoil and pandemonium, all undesirable elements that should be controlled by effective strategic and respected PR practice professional.
Open systems approaches and their value for organisational renewal and survival
Public relations practice requires the adoption of open systems approach as an enabler of information gathering and dissemination, stakeholder relations and relationship building, environmental scanning, monitoring and evaluation issues management media relations, public relations audits, business analysis, investor relations, competitive assessments, govern policy direction and many others.
An open system has external interactions and such interactions can take the form of information energy and materials transfers into or out of the system boundary depending on the nature of the organisation.
The basics of open systems are that an organisation’s environment consists of social, economic and political factors which affect its operations and success.
In management an open system permits the inflow and outflow of information between it and the environment, allowing adaptations to the exchange, while an open system allows this inflow and outflow, closed systems do not allow. In closed systems, entropy is high and the value of public relation practice is not substantially appreciated and professionalised.
It’s used as an ornamental and peripheral activity not worth of any real business value. Conversely the open systems approach consists of inputs, outputs, goals and processes that enable the system to be functional. Corporations depends on their environment for inputs and mutual relationships are facilitated by good public relation practice.
Organisational, application of the public relation open system’s approach
When a group of people come together to pursue a common goal or goals they become an organisation.
Organisations provide avenues for people to work collectively and achieve greater goals than they would have achieved if they were working independently. Traditionally, organisations were viewed as closed systems, isolated from their surroundings.
Organisations were bureaucratically developed with definite hierarchical structures. However, with changing markets and technologies the organisation’s view point shifted to open systems because it allows the business to thrive in diverse environments in view of the fact that they understand the impact of outside forces and their importance to business.
Open systems approach in public relations
Strategically, open systems as applied to public relations practice seeks to explain how organisations interact with the external and internal environment and how those interactions are managed PR in an open system. Public Relations in this case is pro-active and anticipates, scans, monitors, detects, adjusts for and initiates corrective changes.
Public Relations concerns building and maintaining the relationships organisations have with various internal and external publics. The role will vary in substance between organisations depending on the nature and size of the business and organisational culture.
Scholars argue that organisations are affected by and in turn affect the environment in which they operate.
It is the feedback function that illustrates the relevance of systems theory to PR in practice. PR undertakes the role of strengthening relations between an organisation and its subsystems whether internal or external. The external environment is always changing, in turn, the organisation must adapt and evolve.
Organisations form part of the social system that consists of individual or groups (public). Organisations exists by accepting inputs from these publics and transforming them into outputs.
It then receives feedback on those outputs and adjusts accordingly, thus developing a positive feedback, an investment to fight entropy, degeneration and collapse. PR’s responsiveness to environment changes and continual adjustments occur in order to maintain balance and survive.
It’s all about interdependence, interconnection, adaption, continual interaction, establishing a permeable boundary. PR practice is therefore a catalyst of organisational renewal and reconfiguration in a highly competitive business environment and should be positioned strategically to fight entropy, degeneration and collapse.
