Constructing relationship management in Greater China: Types of OPRs, cultivation strategies, and their relationship

Public relations is the major force in the establishment of organization-public relationships (OPRs) in the United States and other countries. The purpose of this study is to extend the theory of relationship management to the Chinese context by investigating the types of relationships between organizations and their Chinese publics, strategies the organizations use to cultivate the relationships, and the relationship between cultivation strategies and types of OPRs. This study is a metaresearch that reports a meta-analysis of three studies on relationship management with publics in mainland China and Hong Kong. By comparing original qualitative and quantitative data from the perspectives of organizations and publics, the result shows that eight relationship types appear in the OPRs with the Chinese publics even though covenantal and mutual communal relationships seem least obvious from the publics’ point of view. In addition, both types and dimensions of OPRs should be used to best explicate the nature of OPRs with various publics. Five additional strategies are employed in cultivating OPRs with the Chinese publics: being attentive, education, personal relationships, keeping promises/organizational credibility, and adherence to relational and cultural rules. The meta-analysis of this research does not suggest a clear relationship between cultivation strategies and types of OPRs. Interestingly, participants from mainland China and Hong Kong report a conflicting result on the symmetrical cultivation strategies’ effect on exchange relationships.