The Reflective Modernization of Public Relations in Organizational Communication

Abstract

The area of public relations has historically developed as a mediator of social criticism in organizational environments in two instances: in the mediation of external criticism originating from the phenomena of public opinion and opinion of the public and in the proposition of a discursive device of internal self-criticism in organizations. In the model of studies of communication as culture, which has the social sciences as supporting discipline, and a bibliographic research procedure, this article has the general objective, in a theoretical instance, to analyze the process of reflexive modernization of public relations in its critical conception in the pragmatism of organizational communication. Between external social criticism and internal self-criticism, public relations, from the perspective of Cicilia Peruzzo, become epistemically contemporary with the theoretical parameters that Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, and Scott Lash sociologically designate as “reflexive modernization”, a condition for modernization to assume itself as an object of its reflection within the scope of contemporary organizations.