SELECTED ASPECTS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITY ORGANISATION IN POLISH ENTERPRISES

Public relations activity is treated as an element ensuring the desired reception of the company with the public. Against a general background on public relations, the article presents selected aspects of organising activities within that scope by the largest Polish enterprises. The analysed entities mostly conduct public relations activities basing on their own services. Every fifth one, however, uses the assistance of external PR agencies. It is still puzzling that representatives of almost every third company claim they do not conduct regular activity such as could be viewed as public relations. From the point of view of organising PR activities important is also the place taken by PR departments or units in cor?porate structure. The necessity of conducting current communication policy requiring very quick reactions indicates clearly that PR department should be directly subordinated to the highest management level. This subordination model dominates in Polish companies and concerns nearly 68% of the analysed subjects. Sometimes there occurs a not fully realised distinction between PR and marketing. The activities in both these spheres should complement each other, which in turn would increase the effectiveness of corporate communication. Good cooperation of the two departments should allow to benefit from synergy effects and lead to cost reduction in communication activity. In almost half of the analysed Polish companies, the distinction between marketing and PR is visible in their organisational structure, for there are in?dependent marketing and PR departments/units. In every third analysed company there is only a marketing department, performing also activities assumed to belong to public relations. In three out of four companies no conflicts are noted between the departments. The conflicts which do appear result from marketing and PR departments/units competing for financial means and sometimes from competence overlap