The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management: Origins, influences, issues and prospects Public Relations Review 40 (2014) 639–653

This paper chronicles the formation and development of the Global Alliance for Public Rela-tions and Communication Management (GA) up to 2002. It sets the GA’s genesis within thecontext of other internationalisation initiatives undertaken by the wider public relationspractitioner community and draws links between the formation of the GA and the emerg-ing phenomenon of globalisation. The paper’s intent is to describe the formation of the GA from a historical perspective, to understand the forces that led to its creation and to appre-ciate the different drivers and motivation of founding members. These factors provide aspringboard to consider some of the issues that currently challenge GA, some of whichwere inherent in the governance model it chose at its inception. Through the analysis of original documentation, supplemented by associated contem-porary materials and in-depth interviews with key players, the paper seeks to address the following questions: why was GA created? What visions and operational models were pre-sented? What challenges emerged and how were they overcome? How do reflections onthe early years of GA inform current issues? The paper concludes with a series of topics for future research.