A comparative case study of the community relations of two chemical companies

In 1986, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) became law. This wide-ranging bill authorized funding for the cleanup of hazardous wastes, a national problem about which the media made the public increasingly aware. Title III of the law, also known as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, required manufacturers, users, or storers of more than 300 hazardous chemicals to report the location and amounts of chemicals on hand, and amounts released into the environment, to state emergency agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Title III, in effect, opened chemical companies and companies in other industries to public scrutiny as never before. These companies were to compile reports and release potentially damaging information forthrightly, yet do so in a manner that did not undermine the public trust. This study examined how the community relations programs of two East Tennessee chemical companies, Tennessee Eastman Company, in Kingsport, and Rohm and Haas Tennessee, in Knoxville, dealt with the challenges of Title III, and investigated how each company's influence in its community may have affected its community relations program. Grunig's four models of public relations were used to describe each company's program and goals. Findings showed that Tennessee Eastman Company, which dominated the social, economic and political landscape of Kingsport, had a community relations program patterned after a more directive, two-way asymmetric public relations model. Rohm and Haas, which was comparatively less influential in the Knoxville community, had a program patterned after the consensus-building two-way symmetric model of public relations. The challenges that Title Mi posed to community relations, however, required a trust-building approach using dialogue to not merely diffuse concerns of local community and environmental activists, but to allow companies to seek out, listen and act upon these concerns themselves, before additional federal regulations require more from businesses.