This project should have three parts, each of which corresponds to the first three stages of the strategic planning model handed out in class—stakeholders, publics, and issues.

First, make a list of the most important stakeholders for your organization you chose (at least three). Stakeholders are groups of people with a stake in the organization—those who are affected by or who affect the organization. Write a short paragraph for each stakeholder group your list explaining how it affects or is affected by your organization. You may use the concept of linkages in Figure 7-1 on page 141 of the assigned reading (Grunig & Hunt: Identifying organizational linkages to publics. In Managing public relations.) as a guide or the sample stakeholder map that I showed in class.

Second, pick one of the stakeholder categories that you identified in Part 1. Then begin the process of segmenting that category into nonpublics, latent publics, aware publics, and active publics as described in Table 7-1 on p. 153. In actual practice, you could use this situational theory to develop questions that could be used in survey research, focus groups, or in-depth interviews. In each case, you would use questions like those in Exhibit 7-1 (pp. 150-151). These questions were intended for survey research. Thus, if you do survey research, you would have to construct a list of problems relevant to your stakeholder category. Then you would prepare a draft of a questionnaire with these questions in it. If you do focus groups or in-depth interviews you would have open-end questions like those in Exhibit 7-1 for problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement recognition. You would probably start by asking them what problems they have encountered with your organization and then ask for each how much the problem affects them or someone they know (involvement), and what if anything they could do about it (construct recognition). You also could ask what keeps them from doing anything. For this part of the assignment, make a list of the consequences that your organization would have on the stakeholder category you have chosen (these are problems). Talk to your friends about your organization to get some idea of the problems you have chosen. Then, make a list of at least three problems that you would want to insert into your questionnaire that you believe would create publics.

Third, move to the issue stage. Remember that public creates issues out of problems. To do so, publics usually become activist groups. Thus, for this third stage, identify at least one activist group that could make an issue out of one or more of these problems. An activist group could be a union, environmental organization, civil rights organization, or environmental group. Research the activist group to learn a little more about it. Then, describe why you think the group affects your organization, and how you think your organization should communicate with the activist group.

IMPORTANT:
-Each of these three segments should run no more than 2 pages
-Able to come up with an organization and discuss with me tomorrow
(CHECK THE ATTACH FILE : EXAMPLE OF POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES ACROSS DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS )
-Well understand and have knowledge about public relation and strategic planning