Lobbying in the United Kingdom
Formal procedures enable individual members of the public to lobby their Member of Parliament but most lobbying activity centres on corporate, charity and trade association lobbying, where organisations seek to amend government policy through advocacy. Companies and individuals who operate in this sector commonly use the terms "public relations", "public affairs", "political consultancy" or "corporate affairs" to describe their activities (though this was also a reaction to the negative publicity surrounding the word "lobbyists" following the 1994 Cash-for-questions affair). Professional public affairs agencies, representing multiple clients, undertake a significant proportion of lobbying activity in addition to individual organisations conducting lobbying on an in-house basis.
Organization–public relationships
As the first scholar to study general theory development in the field of public relations, Mary Ann Ferguson (1984). investigated the main foci in 171 public relations research ABSTRACTS published in "Public Relation Review" OVER THE period 1975 to 1984. Ferguson identified three overall foci that guide public relations research: social responsibility and ethics; social issues and issue management; and public relationships. Based on the three foci, Ferguson predicted that public relationships is the area WITH THE GREATEST POTENTIAL for theory development in public relations. Thus, she asserted that the matter of relationships between an organization and its key publics should be the central unit of the study of public relations research. Ferguson presented her findings to the Public Relations Division at the 1984 annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Gainesville, Florida. Although the paper has been widely cited, it was never published.