Reflecting on the readings on community relations, simply said it means how organizations should develop good relationships with groups or people that belong in the society outside of the organization. In community relations, it is crucial to take note of three different groups which do not affect the organization directly.
Their significance and importance is important to any organization because of the impact the community has on the government, and the government is directly or indirectly involved in making decisions that might affect any organization.
In different countries of the world, each country consists of the society holding on to a common set of beliefs. These are the beliefs that make up who they are and what they choose to follow based on either culture or religion and most of the time are developed and changed through experiences leading to the way the community behaves. Similarly, the three different groups involved in community relations have different sets of beliefs.
To start off, the community. Based on the local context, some examples of communities would be community centres in different districts of Singapore that residents might be actively participating in. Another example could be the People’s Association. The people’s association leads volunteer efforts at promoting social cohesion, racial harmony and community consultation. The community’s common set of beliefs is shaped by the surrounding built environment and their beliefs would be bringing people of Singapore together to build and bridge a cohesive community. Thus activities and events are heavily organized to get the people involved. Organizations should take note of the type of activities and events organized and possibly hold their own event to involve the community.
Not-for-profit groups include social service and fund raising organizations such as the Singapore Children’s Society, Singapore Cancer Society, The Eurasian Association, National Kidney Foundation of Singapore, The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the list goes on. These organizations consists of mainly volunteers and often get support, help and funding from the community. They are not businesses trying to make any profit for themselves, but their beliefs would be to help needy people be it support of financially. These organizations have conservative beliefs, working closely with the government to achieve their goals and objectives. Unlike community groups, not-for-profit organizations only have access to limited funding, and have stakeholders like the media. The media is a form of stakeholder for them the same way a corporation and government uses the media, seeking to gain media coverage for their image and events. Understanding how the media works explain the strong connection between not-for-profit organizations and the media, and this is how organizations can get involved with not-for-profit groups, through the media.
Interests groups consist of people who have a strong passion towards a particular similar interest or they represent the interests of their members. Examples would be Singapore Butterfly Interest Group, Motorbikes and cars interest groups, Career Women’s Group, they could consist of lobbyists as well. Interests groups often oppose issues or events that would be out of the ordinary. This makes framing issues and events easier for special interest groups for the mainstream media to build a good relationship upon. Interest groups usually form around an issue and unform upon resolution of the issue.
These 3 different groups, through their common set of beliefs often make a statement or develop public opinions. The Singapore Government is required to listen to these public opinions in order to improve or change policies and services to the Singapore people.
Thus we can derive the importance of public opinion to the government which develops public policies. Public opinions lies in these community, not-for-profit and interest groups, making it very crucial for organizations to have good relations with them in order to impact the government which in turn impacts them.
This explains how organizations should also learn about the community, how they work, and how to reach out to them. An organization must always bear in mind to come up with events and activities that involve the community so as to foster good relations with them. So, when we go out to work in future, we have to remind ourselves that developing good internal relations within the company are as important as developing good community relations in order for any organization to do well.
