[1] The excellence theory resulted from a study about the best practice in public relations, which was headed by James E. Grunig and funded by the Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1985.
In 1954, Drucker proposed management by objectives approach, which warned that managers might get involved in day-to-day activities and forget their main objectives, and suggested that everybody within an organization should have a clear understanding of the organization's aims, and awareness of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving those aims.
The strategic constituencies approach identifies the elements of the environment whose opposition or support can threaten the organization's goals or help to attain them.
[4] The global public relations theory also suggests that practice in different countries should be different based on culture, the political or economic system, media system, level of economic development, and extent and nature of activism in a certain country.
Rhee's study surveyed public relations practitioners in three types of organizations located in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, using subsets of the original excellence questionnaire and questions to measure the dimensions of culture.
The Personal influence model is developed by Sriramesh, which described practitioners building personal influence with key individuals like government regulators, media, and tax officials by doing favor for them so that they could solicit favors in return when the organizations need help.
[18] Researchers have also found that excellence theory may underpin and perpetuate inequalities of power by imposing a monocultural and normative management model, which can devalue national traditions, minorities and cultural differences, and subject the wellbeing of society to corporate profitability.