Public relations can and should make an important contribution in helping to form an organization's ideas about what it is, what it should do and what its publics want and expect from it.

• Communication Management
  The public relations role that calls for developing communications objectives that are consistent with an organization's overall objectives. As two-way communicators, public relations practitioners interact directly with key publics, relaying the resulting information (with recommendations) to other members of the management team.

• Crisis Management
  Establishing methods and policies to be used when an organization's operations become involved in an emergency affecting the public. This includes policies and procedures for the distribution of information to employees, media, government and other key publics.

• Issues Management
  This involves identifying problems, issues and trends relevant to an organization and then developing and executing a program to deal with them. Included is the study of public policy matters of concern to an organization.

• Relationship Management
  This involves the role of public relations in identifying key publics and establishing strategies for building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with those publics.

• Reputation or Image Management
  The planning and implementing of policies, procedures and strategies that demonstrate an organization's commitment to public and social responsibility, ethical behaviour, corporate identity and reputation with key publics.

• Resource Management
  PR's management of human and financial resources revolves around setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and hiring PR staff and administering those resources.

• Risk Management
  As preventive PR, this role involves helping an organization recognize areas of potential danger and recommending needed changes before potential dangers develop into crises.

• Strategic Management
  Acting as a counselor, the PR practitioner serves on the management team helping the organization develop sound policies that are in the best interests of the public as well as the organization. The PR practitioner integrates an understanding of the concerns and attitudes of key publics into the organization's managerial decision-making process.