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REVIEWS
Public relations ethics and professionalism: The shadow of
excellence
Johanna Fawkes
Routledge 2015 pp 244
ISBN 780415630382
This book is part of Routledge’s ‘New directions in public relations
and communication research’ series. As such, it comes in hardcover
only, with the commensurate steep price tag that academic
publishers charge for what are essentially ‘library runs’ in many
cases – books produced in limited volume to sell to libraries that
are required to purchase them irrespective of their price.
Notwithstanding, this book is an important contribution to public
relations literature specifically, as well as a useful expansion of
thinking about ethics generally.
Academics in the disciplinary field of public relations will need to
do as Fawkes advocates and think in a transdisciplinary and critical
way to access the rich insights that this analysis provides. If you are
a dyed-in-the-wool Grunigian disciple dedicated to the ‘excellence
theory’ of PR (Larissa Grunig, James Grunig and Dozier 2002) and
pretending that PR involves two-way symmetrical relations between
organisations and their stakeholders and publics, hold on to your
hat as you go on what Fawkes calls ‘an adventure in thinking – and
feeling’ (p. 1). She proposes a Jungian approach to ethics in public
relations. To embrace this approach fully requires a deep reading of
Jung’s work. However, in this clear, well-written text Fawkes makes
her case accessible to those not well versed in Jung’s ideas on the
psyche and its elements including the ego, the persona, and the
shadow.
It is the latter, in particular, that is a central focus of this book.
While the public face of an organisation is its persona in Jungian
terms – increasingly created and crafted in contemporary societies
by public relations – its shadow comprises those elements that the
organisation (and PR practitioners) do not want to talk about or
reveal. In the case of PR, its shadow is persuasion. Fawkes argues
that dominant paradigms and theories of public relations including
rhetorical and relationship management approaches present an
idealised conceptualisation of PR. Her Jungian framing of PR sees
‘persuasion as the rejected [or ignored] shadow material’ and she
argues that reflexive ‘engagement with persuasion is a prerequisite
for developing a depth approach to ethics’ in PR (p. 219).
110 Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016