Abstract

This study aims to explore the practice of public relations management in maintaining relations with the public who interact with a corporate organization. To investigate the role of public relations in maintaining good reputation, a mixed method approach was employed taking Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporate as a case study. Data were collected from different instruments such as questionnaire, document review and in-depth interview. The questionnaire was administered to 50 participants, while in-depth interview was done with the public relations department officers of EBC. The findings of this study indicated that the public relation campaign of EBC is not research oriented and the outcome of the campaign is not measured. In addition, survey of the audiences’ perception indicated that audiences have negative perceptions towards the organisation. Hence, it is possible to extrapolate that the efforts made by the public relations department of EBC to manage organisational reputation is not successful. This could possibly be due to lack of research-oriented public relations campaign and lack of research on return on investment.

Key words: Corporate communication, public relations, corporate organization, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporate.