Attitudinal professionalism and professional competencies as predictors of public relations practitioners’ self-efficacy

This research examined the PR practitioners’ attitudinal professionalism and competencies as predictors of their self-efficacy. This conceptualization was in response to scholars’ lamentation of practitioners’ low ability, low self-confidence, low competency and acute shortage of researches on practitioners’ personal development. Six research questions, six research objectives, and eight hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Thus, using a probability sampling technique, six hundred (600) public relations practitioners in North-Western Nigeria were selected to serve as a sample for the research, out of which four hundred and thirty-three (433) responded to the self-administered questionnaire which constituted the quantitative data of the research. This study used the quantitative approach as the best option to test a relationship. The instruments used for this study were adapted from previously developed instruments by other scholars to measure the constructs under study. Descriptive statistics using mean and standard deviation was employed to analyze the first three research objectives while structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to test the remaining three research objectives of the study under which 8 hypotheses were developed. The research findings indicate that practitioners have moderate attitudinal professionalism, moderate competencies and high self-efficacy. Similarly, when causal relationship was tested, it was found that attitudinal professionalism, and competencies have significant influence on self-efficacy, and that there is high level relationship between attitudinal professionalism and professional competencies. However, when independent analyses between five (5) attitudinal professionalism dimensions and self-efficacy was conducted, it was found that belief in public service and autonomy have no causal effect on self-efficacy but a correlation between the two dimensions and self-efficacy were established. Findings of this research work have raised the need for PR scholars to focus on attitudinal and behavioral professionalism as a way of improving public relations as a profession. Practitioners have been aspiring for strategic position but they are not found highly committed to mastering strategic competencies neither are they found highly committed to PR profession’s development, even though they have reported to have high ability in their professional duties. This work has found that though there is progress on the way PR is practiced in Nigeria, however, practitioners are do not practiced strategic PR. Thus, the practical implication lies on the fact that, for practitioners to attain the position of autonomy, they have to make a deliberate effort towards self-development. This work have also tested and confirmed the heurism of social cognitive theory. Conceptualizing Hall’s Attitudinal professionalism model, Competency model and Grunig and Hunt model under same framework have introduced a unique design which contributed in theory expansion used structural equation modeling which is characterized by rigorous tests for reliability and validity of instrument. Finally, studying the concept of self-efficacy in the domain of PR has remained the originality of this research work.

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