Horizontal Structure in Public Relations: An Exploratory Study of Departmental Differentiation

In 1984, }. Grunig and Hunt devoted fewer than two pages in their book on public relations management to what they called “the division of labor on a single level of authority” (p. 101). Why such scant attention to the horizontal set-up of the typical public relations department? Did they consider structure relatively unimportant to the effectiveness of public relations? No. Although J. Grunig and Hunt considered this horizontal differentiation vital to the operation of a public relations subsystem within the larger organizational system, they could find no systematic studies or even anecdotal descriptions in this area.