ABSTRACT
Issues management has grown as an applied and research discipline to compensate for what some believed was an insufficient approach to the practice of public relations in the mid-1970s. The inadequacy of the then state-of-the art approach to activist criticism was repeatedly demonstrated by strategic responses to corporate critics through counter publicity efforts, rather than solid issues engagement and corporate strategic planning adjustments. Instead of taking more sound responses to such criticism, many organizations engaged in stonewalling, expressed outrage at what were alleged to be presumptuous outbursts by critics of big business, and blamed the problems of society on the persons who were trying to call attention to and offer ways to solve those problems. This reactionary response, which often tried to blame the messenger, seemed to imply that no civil-rights, consumer-rights, or environmental-rights problems would exist if the critics would cease their clamor.
