Confrontational coordination: The rearrangement of public relations in the automotive industry during the 1970s

Ingo Köhler

Business History, 2019, vol. 61, issue 5, 898-917

Abstract: The article stresses the importance of communication processes as a fundamental basis for interest coordination in Rhenish Capitalism. Using the example of public relations work of the German automotive industry during the 1960s and 1970s, the article shows that a long dominant consensus about automobility as a guarantee for economic growth and social prosperity began to unravel as the negative aspects of mass motorisation came under public scrutiny. Older asymmetric concepts of corporate communication based on manipulative lobbying efforts and agenda setting strategies were superseded by an ‘issue management’ approach that took the collective interests of the public seriously. These confrontational but also responsive patterns of communication strengthened the institutional arrangements in the long run.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2016.1257001

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