Origins of Diversity in Public Relations

An early mention of diversity in public relations occurred in 1992 in the book "Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management." Excellence theory linked diversity in public relations to requisite variety, a term Karl Weick coined in 1979. Requisite variety refers to how an organization must be diverse internally to build effective strategic relationships externally.

In making this connection, Larissa Grunig, James Grunig, and William Ehling note that if all of the public relations practitioners are white, they may not realize that their organizations can impact, or be impacted, by people of color, some who may see the organizations as illegitimate.

This observation led the Grunigs and Ehling to conclude that diversity in public relations may enhance the effectiveness of an organization and the careers of communicators of color.

Communicators from culturally diverse backgrounds can serve as go-betweens to translate for organizations and their diverse publics, according to David Dozier, Larissa A. Grunig, and James E. Grunig in the 1995 book "Manager's Guide to Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management." The authors also note that these communicators “cannot provide needed requisite variety” if they are not a part of, or do not have access to, senior management.

“Employees from diverse backgrounds provide organizations with the requisite variety to construct pictures of reality inside the organization that more closely match the reality as others outside the organization understand it,” Dozier and the Grunigs wrote.

Regarding those diverse backgrounds, James Grunig notes that initial excellence theory research emphasized gender, particularly the roles of women in a female-dominated industry. Doing so eventually led to adding race and ethnicity to the theory to be applicable outside the United States “in diverse cultural, political, and economic contexts.”

Larissa Grunig and Elizabeth Toth (2006) argue that requisite variety does not guarantee effectiveness in public relations. The concept also does not mean that the percentage of minorities in the workplace should mirror the percentage in the environment. The authors suggest that “providing opportunities for women and