Development of professional roles in the practice of public relations in Chile

Using survey responses of 577 public relation practitioners, this article examines role conceptions in Chilean public relations, as well as the effects that different individual and organizational factors have on their professional worldviews. The results show that how Chilean practitioners perceive their roles can be grouped into four different types: the long-term strategic, the short-term technical, the passive-complaisant, and the active-vigilant. In general terms, Chilean public relations practitioners distance themselves from the passive-complaisant role, giving greater importance to the other three. The findings also reveal that gender, education level, job commitment, perceived autonomy, organization type, and geographical location are the factors that better predict Chilean PR professional roles, while hierarchy level and organization's reach do not directly affect their perceptions.

► Practitioners’ roles can be grouped in four types: long term-strategic, short term-technical, passive-complaisant, and active-vigilant. ► Chilean practitioners distance themselves from the passive-complaisant role, giving greater importance to the other three. ► Gender, education, job commitment, autonomy, organization type and location have significant effects on PR professional roles. ► Hierarchy level and organization reach do not have any direct effect on Chilean PR professional roles. ► Having studied journalism is important only in the modeling of the short term-technical role.