Conception and strategic management of publics in the energy companies in Spain

Abstract

The notion of publics as specifics and segmented groups has been a paradigm shift in public relations and corporate communication. This change in the way of understanding the receiver in the communication process allows communicate function to manage the relationship between the organization and those groups more effectively. For this reason, organizations should implement processes of identifying and prioritizing publics to communicate and be engaged with these groups in a strategic and effective way. The aim of this paper is to know what conception of "publics" prevails in the communication departments of natural gas and electricity companies in Spain, and on the other hand to assess the level of coherence /correlation between the identification and prioritization of strategic publics and the design of communicative actions to strategically manage the relationship between the organizations and these groups. The methodology of the quantitative study was aimed at Spanish energy companies and implemented through a questionnaire in an online platform. The results indicate that there is a dichotomy in the idea of publics in energy companies: on the one hand, they are conceived as specific groups, and on the other hand, they are considered as a massive collective. Nevertheless, it is observed that there is a methodological consistency between the importance assigned to the publics and the implementation of communication actions towards them. KeywordsEnergy sector enterprises, public relations, publics, identification, segmentation prioritization, corporate communication IntroductionThe publics comprise one of the objects of the study and of the implementation of the public relations and corporate communication. This is thus expressed by many researchers of the discipline (Grunig & Hunt, 1984;Xifra, 1999;Cutlip et al., 2001;Grunig et al., 2002;Míguez González, 2010). In this sense, Míguez González (2010: 11) One of the main changes in the field of public relations has been the concept of "publics" to the detriment of the idea of the "general public", in other words, to incorporate the premise of the segmentation of the population into groups whose members bear a greater similarity among themselves than with the members of other segments (Grunig, 1989). Seitel (2002: 15) asserts that the public relations and corporate communication professionals should communicate with "many different publics [...] as each public has different needs, thus requiring different types of communication for each one". However, this mainstream conception of the recipient subject is not the only one, as one can also find other ways of understanding it, as the "audience", "general public" or even the "environment".In the practice of public relations and corporate communication, the conception that an organisation may have on the recipient subject may influence the way in which it identifies, segments and ranks the groups with which it relates and which may therefore condition the management of the communication with each one of th...

Responsabilidad Social Corporativa y crisis sanitaria de la Covid-19: la comunicación de las empresas energéticas españolas en Twitter Corporate

“…La pandemia ha impactado de manera directa en muchas empresas, especialmente en el sector energético en España, el cual ha sufrido una notable disminución de sus inversiones (Turk & Kamiya, 2020;Vilariño, 2020). El sector energético es estratégico en España, puesto que de este dependen el resto de sectores económicos (López et al, 2005;Oliveira et al, 2015). Su actividad es fundamental para el funcionamiento y el desarrollo económico y competitivo, motivo por el cual es necesario que ejerza como ejemplo de RSC para el resto de empresas (Campillo-Alhamada & Igual-Antón, 2021;Haro de Rosario et al, 2011;Oliveira et al, 2015).…”

“…El sector energético es estratégico en España, puesto que de este dependen el resto de sectores económicos (López et al, 2005;Oliveira et al, 2015). Su actividad es fundamental para el funcionamiento y el desarrollo económico y competitivo, motivo por el cual es necesario que ejerza como ejemplo de RSC para el resto de empresas (Campillo-Alhamada & Igual-Antón, 2021;Haro de Rosario et al, 2011;Oliveira et al, 2015). Así, la pandemia se ha convertido en una oportunidad para dirigirse hacia un futuro más resistente, seguro y basado en la sostenibilidad (Turk & Kamiya, 2020;Vilariño, 2020).…”