Looking back, moving forward: A review and reflection of the organization-public relationship (OPR) research

Organization-Public Relationship (OPR), as a key concept addressed in the field of public relations has attracted wide attention in the past three decades. This study presents a comprehensive review of 156 relevant studies from 1998 to 2016 and categorizes them into five main clusters, which include the outcomes, antecedents, mediation, process, and structure of OPR. Findings also identify five gaps in current OPR research such as idealized propositions based on mutual benefits, a lack of research on multi-party relationships, problematic “trust” as the measurement, unilateral self-reported research data, and dominated cross-sectional methods By drawing contingency theory of accommodation and the relationship management theory, this study proposes the concept of contingent organization-public relationship (COPR) for future studies that seek to explore variations of OPR longitudinally.