This paper discusses the merit of using a Value Based Education (VBE) approach to equip future public relations and communication practitioners with the values needed to adhere to ethical practice and foster these values in the organizations they will steward. The approach utilizes indepth and sustained exposure to complex societal issues to instill an ethical, poly-contextually responsive and diversity sensitive consciousness in students. The need to sensitize future practitioners at institutions of higher learning to the professional requirements of this context and to the inclusive values needed to respond appropriately is an important priority in increasing their strategic relevance globally. This article illustrates how VBE was practically implemented through engaging public relations and strategic communication students in complex social issues such as the plight of economically marginalized communities, human trafficking, and migration. In this paper we propose a Value Based Education model for PR education, based on our experience of teaching Millennial students in South Africa.

Introduction

South Africa’s emerging context offers an ideal example of the complexities presented by 11 official languages coexisting and jostling between a multifaceted African and Western worldview. Not only does South African’s labor market favor men (Statistics South Africa, 2018) but exhibits high levels of racial inequality, income polarization with a few high-income earners and a small middle class, chronic poverty and low intergenerational mobility that primarily manifests amongst black South Africans, the unemployed, the less educated, female-headed households, large families, and children (Sulla & Zikhali, 2018). Sharp shifts in stakeholder expectations and business are compounded by reports of large-scale fraud, looting of state coffers, anti-competitive business practices including price fixing by monopolistic cartels and accounting fraud. Prominent examples include South African electricity supplier and public enterprise, Eskom and global brands McKinsey, SAP, and Steinhoff International. Against the backdrop of political and economic upheavals, the demise of British public relations firm Bell Pottinger and its expulsion from Britain’s Public Relations and Communications Association (Alderman, 2017), elicited a call for stricter regulations in the industry by the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA) to safeguard against any further damage to the reputation and credibility of the profession in South Africa. Described as an aggressive reputation laundering firm, with despots and rogues as clients (Alderman, 2017; Segal, 2018), Bell Pottinger met its demise for the unethical campaign it ran on behalf of a private firm accused of involvement in state corruption. The campaign manipulated public opinion in South Africa to serve a narrow interest that fueled racial divisions based on inequality and a lack of economic transformation.