PR-olitik
En fenomenografisk studie av konstruktionen av kunskap och kompetens i gränslandet mellan politik och näringsliv
The Swedish Public Relation industry has gone through a rapid growth in the recent decade. A peculiar, although perhaps not unexpected, development is that former politicians and politically employed individuals to a larger extent have been the subject of recruitment effort from the industry. Simultaneously there has been a public debate concerning the influence on Public Relations and Lobbying over the political agenda. The purpose of this thesis is to widen and deepen the discussion concerning Public Relations consultants. It centers on the individual consultants and takes their competence as the point of departure. Using a phenomenographic approach towards competence it is argued that competence only can be fully understood through the understanding of the individuals own conception of their work. An examination of thirteen consultants has been carried out, aiming to understand this concept of competence. The result of the study is that Public Relations consultants can not be treated as a uniform group, but rather as a heterogeneous collection of individuals with differing conception of themselves and their context. This leads to further consequences when it comes to the general debate and discussion concerning Public Relations and its relation to democracy. It is argued that neither the functionalistic approach that has dominated the discourse for a long time, nor the critical approach of more recent research, to the full extent can be said to cover the subject satisfactorily. It is thus vital for a proper understanding that this variation is used to give a more balanced view of the topic.