Public relations as a strategic intelligence for the 21st century: Contexts, controversies, and challenges

• We look for better ways for PR to adapt to contemporary contexts of uncertainty.
• We revisit controversies over multiple intelligences and emotional intelligence.
• We build on learnings from the controversies to rethink aspects of PR.
• We examine areas that aspire to be the next big intelligence.
• We consider PR as a strategic intelligence for the 21st century.

This article features uncertainty as one of the dominant challenges facing society and, therefore, contemporary public relations. In looking for ways to better adapt and promote public relations to the service of fully functioning society, it revisits controversies around the notion of multiple intelligences (MIs), including emotional intelligence. It examines the stakes and status involved in claiming “ownership” of IQ or of promoting another “form” of intelligence(s). In addition, the article foregrounds the formative role played by promotional communication, especially in framing ideas and telling stories, to gain traction in academic communities and to gain acceptance among wider publics. Finally, it suggests that public relations is a disciple of strategic intelligence that could learn by adapting to, or adopting from, the growing range of subjects aspiring to be the next big intelligence. We suggest that such an adaptation has benefits: it might to better access knowledge with contemporary and future relevance rather than slowly consolidating a more insular Public Relations Body of Knowledge based on past results; it can improve the field's impact and reputation by engaging public relations with cross-disciplinary controversies; and it can follow Gardner's (2008) forward-looking view of the need for any discipline, or cluster of good intelligences, to be oriented to serving a global community.