Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS)

STOPS is a theory which guides organizations to segment and prioritize publics with whom an organization should build relationship. Because public relations practitioners are the boundary spanners determining which publics are prioritized, the adoption of a theory that guides ethical practice is critical.

On a daily basis, public relations practitioners work on public-initiated public relations (PPR) problems. They identify who active publics are through environmental scanning, such as media analysis and public consultation. They incorporate their concerns into organizational decision-making processes. Active publics have high problem recognition (e.g., recognizing the organization’s decision or behavior to be affecting them), high involvement recognition (e.g., feeling involved in and connected with the problem) and low constraint recognition (e.g., believing that they could do something to resolve the problem).

As a result, they would be active in their communicative action in problem solving, such as actively seeking and sharing information about the problem. These active publics are segmented and prioritized because their communicative action could turn other non-active publics into active publics. If organizations do not consider their interests and concerns in the decisions they make, these active publics could create an issue which could eventually escalate into a crisis.

In communication campaigns, practitioners work on organization-initiated public relations (OPR) problems that they would seek to create active publics about a potential issue which threatens an organization’s mission. Thus, in the situation analysis, practitioners should conduct environmental scanning to identify and understand these issues. For example, the identification of skin cancer among farmers could be useful for the Cancer Council Australia because high cancer rates could threaten the mission of the organization. The creation of active publics who would be actively engaged in communicative action in problem solving could potentially turn non-active publics into active publics by increasing their problem recognition and involvement recognition and decreasing their constraint recognition.

In applying STOPS to ethical practice of global public relations, the following questions should be considered:

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