Mclibel Case Study Essay Research Paper As

Mclibel Case Study Essay, Research Paper

As organizations seeks ways to increase profits by filtering into international markets, many turn to the field of public relations as a way of reaching cross-cultural markets. Factors such as values, cultural differences, language barriers, beliefs, etc…in order to successfully promote an organization’s products and services. Public relations practitioners have the responsibility to be the mediator between the organizations and public(s). According to Murphy and Dee (1992), “ Public relations makes organizations more effective by building relationships with stakeholders in the environment that have the potential to constrain or enhance the mission of the organization.” This role also involves disseminating and seeking information to the public. This information/feedback provides the public relations practitioners and the organizations with insight as how the publics perceive the organization.

When the organizations forget/ignore the importance of public relations practitioner’s role in the organizational structure, this may often result in dissatisfactions among the organization’s publics and often react in a way that may harm to the organization. This conflict is characterized as activism, which when not dealt correctly, can end in harsh consequences such as tarnished reputation or decrease in profits.

1. McDonald’s perspective in identifying their key publics in the Mclibel case.

It’s very important to correctly identify and characterize the relevant key publics. Dewy(1982) first propounded a public is a group whose members face a similar problem, recognize that problem exists, and organizes something to do about it. Grunig and Hunt(1984) assert that there are three stages in the evolutions of publics. In the first stage, the public does not recognize the problem. In latent stages, the public moves to the aware stage when it recognizes the problem. The final stage is the active stage recognizes the problem and organizes something to do about it. According to J.E. Grunig and Hunt (1984) the idea is to communicate with an aware public before it actively opposes an organization, thus becoming an activist public.

London Greenpeace is an activist group with 3.3 million members in over 22 countries that use highly visible actions to draw media attention to environmental problems. The London Greenpeace group, a division of Greenpeace, is an independent group of activists that has no involvement in any political party. This group meets weekly to “share concern for the oppression in our lives and the destruction of our environment. Anderson (1992) cited that weaknesses in most case studies of activism is that similar case studies should be conducted that examine activism from the perspective of both the organizations and of the activists groups, which is applicable to this study of the McLibel case. In my research, I came across must more literature and disseminated information from the small activist group of London Greenpeace versus the large multi-national corporation of McDonald’s. This study also points to the need of more studies that examine the special problems of international communication. The actions of a McDonald’s triggered activist conflict not only in London, but in

other different countries as well.

“If public relations practitioners are to assess issues successfully and identify publics that are likely to become active on those issues, they must look beyond the confines of their own culture and beyond the borders of their own country,” Anderson (1992).

Greenpeace, being an extreme organization, has to “manage or maintain its public image as a group that will not compromise on environmental issues, Murphy and Dee (1992). The organization fits Grunig’s (1989) description of a high involvement, information seeking public which believe in collective intervention in organizational decision making. This public seeks to change the direction of environmental decline versus a substitution for lost resources.

Strategies of conflict used by Greenpeace, extreme actions, unilateral demands and its intolerance for compromisation. This model emphasizes winning at the expense of the other in which both Greenpeace and McDonald’s exemplified through its actions. This method includes communication through manipulation of the issues to slant arguments in its own favor, the use of flamboyant symbols to depict choices in absolute terms, and the refusal to cede any points as pointed by Murphy and Dee (1992).

Greenpeace used flamboyant symbols in celebrating the second anniversary of the trial by inviting the media and the public to celebrate by eating a cake in the shape of Ronald McDonald’s face. (McLibel video).

The largest support for this belief came from Mcdonalds worst public relations blunder in it’s history which occurred in Britian. It took court two penniless left activists, David Morris and Helen Steel, who had distributed a factsheet about Mcdonalds which the company claimed was libelous. Unlike three others who also received writs from the company, Morris and Steel refused to apologize

Definition of Activism

L.A. Grunig(1992) defines activism as: “An activist public is a group of two or more individual who organize to influence another public or publics through action that may include education, compromise, persusion, pressu