An organisation comes in contact with a wide variety of people. It has to communicate with them and touch them. This communication should be such that generates goodwill for the organisation. By definition, public relations establishes and maintains relationships which are beneficial between the organisation and the public. By public we mean the people or groups with which an organisation interacts — employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, investors, lending institutions, government, local communities, pressure groups, trade unions and the society at large. In other words, all those who have a stake in the organisation or stakeholders. It could be a financial or non-financial stake.

An organisation may have an in-house PR department or may avail of the services of an outside professional PR agency. PR is both tactical and strategic. It enables an organisation to build a corporate image tactically. As a function of management it enables to maintain favourable relationships with audiences to create corporate reputation. It deals with both the internal and external publics.