Dear Bilquis Naqvi, Greetings and Happy New Year. I have in October 2009 completed my Phd degree for my research on public relations practices among India's top 100 business organisations as rated by Economic Times 2006. The thesis titled "Excellent Public Relations and Effective Organisations - a Study of Indian Industry" reported results of a study that examined the applicability of 6 of the 10 principles of public relations excellence among . Additionally, I have also studied the co-relation between the prevalence of excellence principles with the cultural values of Indian PR practitioners. Briefly, the findings of my benchmarking study suggests that practitioners in India are `not excellent' in many areas which are considered important for the function to be considered strategic by their organisations. Indian practitioners are mostly doing what is called `technical' work - press agentry. Most practitioners are technicians and not managers (even though their designations may sound managerial). My study has other interesting findings and I have developed a PR Capability Maturity Model that can help individual practitioners and PR departments to assess their excellence levels and derive measures to improve their excellence. This study is a replication of the IABC study conducted in the US and UK 15 years ago. Mr Bish Mukherjee has educated us all a lot about IABC and their creditable work in supporting research. IABC is a model association of working professionals which supports and publishes academic research work. For my literature review, I have extensively researched published research work on PR in India. Sadly, these are very few and the only internationally published work happened 15 years ago. Now that my Phd is complete, I am writing my work for publication in international journals. Prentice Hall India is collaborating with me to publish my findings as a book. I take this opportunity to appeal to PR practitioners to collaborate and support academicians to do research by sharing information and helping research with your practical learnings. Of course, the participanting practitioner will be credited as a co-author in publications. I also appeal to all the associations of PR professionals in India to institute awards for PR research and education every year along with their awards for professional work. Research and practice have to go hand in hand. That is the way to bring excellence in both. Those interested in conducting and participating in research are welcome to contact me. Sincerely, Dr Uma Gopinath Bhushan Reader, Business Communication Area K J Somaiya Institute of Mangement Studies & Research Vidyavihar, Mumbai 400 077 --- On Tue, 12/22/09, Bish Mukherjee <mishanetwork@
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