ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by examining the ecological models that frame contemporary discussions of the role and significance of public relations to organizations. It argues for a view of organizational culture as a cognitive system based in the historical experience of the group and shared among group members. The chapter describes the enterprise of organizational ethnography that provides descriptions of organizational cultures. It integrates organizational ethnography with ecological public relations models in order to detail the implications of ethnoecology in public relations research and theory. Ethnoecology examines the “way in which cognitive organization of recognized environmental phenomena affects (consciously or unconsciously) ecological relations”. The significance of ethnoecology to public relations theory and practice is found in the view that organizational culture mediates the organization/environment relationship. The chapter argues that contemporary models of public relations place its functional role and theoretical significance within an ecological perspective.
