Community engagement.

According to Putman, social capital is defined as features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions. As I understand, building bondage among individuals within their communities is the core of this concept because the relationships among individuals will improve their communities or societies by having individuals act together and trust each other. With this theory, a good society would be consist of beneficial relationships among individuals. I think the problem here is the way of achieve this goal. 

 For example, in a case of the Korean government, they've tried to trigger interests from people by making people feel unsafe with the North Korea. In 1960s Korea, the government made people  associated strongly against the North Korea. People who got scared of the North Korea built cooperative atmosphere together, advocating the government's policy against the North Korea and had highly united communities. With this kind of social capital where people were highly supportive, it was much easier for the government to execute their policies and hold their power. This kind of social capital can be seen as boding social capital and some politicians are still using this strategy. 

 According to this example, social capital is needed because it can help organizations or governments execute their policies easily and work with public efficiently. I admit that social capital is necessary. However, the important thing in social capital is they way to achieve goals. That is the task given to public relations practitioners. PR practitioners should be able to promote community mind to public to build healthy social capital. For instance of this kind of promotion, I took a class in the US last year and the teacher encouraged the students to constitute groups together and to plan how to engage in the communities and the students actually had to do community services or civic engagement actions. This could be a good example for promoting social capital among the local students. In addition to, this class was facilitating the relationships among the students of the class. I know these days, societies are getting diverse and consist of a number of various individuals. Nevertheless, the individuals still share a common issue the fact they are the organizing parts their communities. 

 It is easy to think about oneself as an individual, "I". However, once an individual realize that "I"s are forming "WE" such as their friends, families or colleagues and "WE"s are forming "ALL" which can refer to their communities, then "I" would recognized that "I" am the part of the community and able to affect the community in any ways. Thus, the important role of PR practitioners would be to enlighten individuals of communities with beneficial campaigns to the communities and bring community minds. PR practitioners should know what people are interested about their communities and share information about the issues with people and try to make people engage in the issue. 

PRs mind-map

What is related to Public Relations?!

Who get the benefits?

  

One of the main goals for many organizations is making profits. For an organization, since it is related to making profits, having benefits is very important and it is what they mainly care about. An organization cannot make profits alone itself. They need customers or clients who would like to use their service or products. That's why an organization can be easily affected by public. Public is their customer group. So building good relationship with public is a significant task for organizations. 

   In building relationship with public, an organization should not only focus on benefits for itself, but also focus on benefits for public. So there need win-win strategies. That's why an organization should support its public or communities. Pursuing mutual benefits is important and this can make an organization listen and pay attention to public. Listening to public can have the organization understand public and interact with them. When an organization tries to interact with the external public, they also start to build loyalty with the organization because they would feel they are respected by the organization. Feeling respected is important. Human being is very emotional and always wants to be respected and considered as important being.

  If an organization actually respects its public and wants to have them involved in decision-making processes, collaborative relationship between two groups can be developed. In this kind of relationship, the organization and the public consider each other as partner and there exist trust and commitment between them. To an organization, having dialogues with public also can increase trust and commitment from the public. Dialogues are relational dialogues where both participate with relational goals. In dialogues, (or communications) transparency is an also important factor to increase trust between each other. Transparency can be increased by sharing information and resolving issues to benefit all stakeholders (an organization and the public). Having face-to-face dialogues can be also helpful and increase intimacy. 

   Developing relationship with public is very important for an organization. However, keeping relationship can be more important for the organization. Since public is very sensitive and emotional with an organization making profits from public, an organization should be always opened to public and ready to communicate with them, not just talk to them but also listen to them. An organization should keep its words to public and show it.