Institute for Public Relations
IPR is featuring some of the many LGBTQ+ pioneers and modern-day heroes to celebrate Pride month.

Franklin (Frank) E. Kameny was an American LGBTQ+ activist who is credited with transforming the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Kameny served in the U.S. Army during World War II and then earned a Master’s degree and a doctorate from Harvard University before obtaining a government job. Then in 1958, he was arrested for his sexual orientation, fired from his job, and barred from ever working for the federal government again.

Kameny challenged his dismissal before the Civil Service Commission and then sued the government in federal court. He did not win the case but this is regarded as the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation to be brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1961, he co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, one of the earliest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups. He also challenged the American Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

After a half-century of activism, Kameny was recognized at the highest levels for his contributions to LGBTQ+ equality and received a formal apology from the U.S. government in 2009.
Eve R. Heffron, University of Florida, and Melissa D. Dodd, Ph.D., APR, University of Central Florida
This blog is based on the original journal article in the Public Relations Journal.

The concept of American democracy has conventionally been structured around voters receiving political information from government institutions, political parties, and news media sources. Today, corporations play a major role in a democratic society by taking public stances on controversial social-political issues, otherwise termed corporate social advocacy or CSA (Dodd, 2018; Dodd & Supa, 2014, 2015; Palazzo & Scherer, 2006).

Companies are now considered central political actors that are reshaping the democratic system in ways they have never done before (Gower, 2006; Palazzo & Scherer, 2006). Today, companies face pressure from stakeholders to exercise their corporate power to encourage social and political change. Often, in response to stakeholder pressure exercised through social media and boycotting/buycotting behaviors, companies take public stances on divisive issues aimed at influencing policy changes. However, research has not addressed the potential reciprocal effect that corporate issues engagement has on the stakeholders themselves, and the resulting societal-level influences.
Institute for Public Relations
This post summarizes a roundtable discussion by the IPR Measurement Commission.

Recently, a dozen members of the IPR Measurement Commission participated in an online discussion about reputation measurement. In this conversation, each member offered their perspective on whether reputation measurement has changed as well as the opportunities and challenges of measuring reputation.

Some key takeaways from the conversation included:
  • Employee data is becoming a key indicator of reputation.
  • The bar for measuring reputation is increasingly becoming higher.
  • Surveys remain highly relevant because they are still the closest true approximation of reality for companies with large, complex groups of stakeholders.
PwC assessed how employees view discrimination and corporate purpose in the workplace.

A survey of 32,517 working adults across the globe was conducted in February 2021.

Key findings include:
  • 50% of workers say they have faced discrimination at work which led them to miss out on career advancement or training. 
  • 22% of participants reported being passed over for opportunities because of their age.
  • Younger workers were just as likely as older workers to report being passed over for opportunities due to age.
  • 75% of respondents say they want to work for an organization that will make a positive contribution to society.
  • 46% of respondents said they’d choose a job that "makes a difference" over a higher salary.
Institute for Public Relations | 352-392-0280 | [email protected] | https://instituteforpr.org