W. Timothy Coombs & Sherry J. Holladay 
It’s Not Just PR 
Public Relations in Society

In the second edition of their award-winning book, W. Timothy
Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay provide a broad and thorough look at
the field of public relations in the world today and assess its
positive and negative impact on society’s values, knowledge,
and perceptions.

* Uses a range of global, contemporary examples, from
multi-national corporations through to the non-profit sector

* Updated to include discussion of new issues, such as the role
and limitations of social media; the emergence of Issues
Management; how private politics is shaping corporate behavior; and
the rise of global activism and the complications of working in a
global world

* Covers the search within the profession for a definition of PR,
including the Melbourne Mandate and Barcelona Principles

* Balanced, well organized, and clearly written by two leading
scholars

Table of Content

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction to the Second Edition 1

1 Does Society Need Public Relations? 4

2 Ethical Implications of Public Relations 36

3 Who Practices Public Relations? 60

4 Public Relations Influences Society 90

5 Shifting the View of Public Relations 123

References 141

Index 159

About the author

W. Timothy Coombs is Professor in the Nicholson School of
Communication at the University of Central Florida. His books
include the award-winning Ongoing Crisis Communication
(2007) and Code Red in the Boardroom (2006). With
Sherry J. Holladay, he is co-author of Managing Corporate Social
Responsibility (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and PR Strategy and
Application (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and co-editor of The
Handbook of Crisis Communication (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
He has worked with consulting firms in the U.S. and Europe on ways
to improve crisis communication efforts for their clients.

Sherry J. Holladay is Professor in the Nicholson School
of Communication at the University of Central Florida. She teaches
courses in public relations and corporate communication and her
research interests include corporate social responsibility, crisis
communication, reputation management, activism, and stakeholder
relations. Her work appears in the Journal of Public Relations
Research, Public Relations Review, Management Communication
Quarterly, Journal of Communication Management, and
International Journal of Strategic Communication. With
W. Timothy Coombs, she is co-author of Managing Corporate
Responsibility (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and PR Strategies and
Applications (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and co-editor of The
Handbook of Crisis Communication (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).