In today's world, the value of a company is measured not just by its balance sheet, but also by the strength of its relationships with those upon whom it is dependent for its success. It is the job of public relations professionals to build and nurture those relationships with a company's stakeholders - investors, customers, partners and employees. Given the pressures on the modern corporation from all fronts, it should be no surprise that public relations is one of the fastest growing career fields tracked by the US Department of Labor.

The importance of relationships and communications with stakeholders has grown as companies' net worth has increasingly come to depend on non-financial assets like corporate reputation, intellectual capital, public trust, employee commitment and brand loyalty. A recent study by the accounting firm, Ernst & Young, found that these intangible assets represent anywhere from 30% to 50% of a company' s market value. Surveys of 275 buy-side investors and analysis of 300 sell-side reports showed that the more analysts use non-financial measures, the more accurate their earnings forecasts.

Ernst & Young concluded: "How skillfully companies manage key non-financial areas of importance and then communicate related successes to outside constituencies -- shareholders, investors -- will have a powerful effect on how they are valued." Companies rely on their corporate communications officer and public relations firms to handle that important task. And the public relations profession increasingly is recruiting MBAs with the business management and communication skills to meet those needs.

Perhaps one of the most important attributes of a successful public relations professional is the ability to tune into the external world of an organization to discover issues and opportunities, to identify friends and allies. In an age of intense media scrutiny and Internet intrusiveness, virtually everything an organization does or says will find its way into the public domain. This can be an advantage in tracking competitors' activities, a challenge in anticipating threats to one's own organization. For MBAs with intellectual curiosity and active listening skills, public relations offers a chance to manage those early warning functions.

Responding to those issues and critics tests one's communications and counseling skills. It's never enough anymore to just put out the company line and expect everyone to believe or act on it. Credibility is earned by an organization over time; it's a factor of a company's reputation. And reputations are built by maintaining strong and lasting relationships and consistent communications with all of an organization's stakeholders.

The range of audiences and constituents for today's companies is broad -- from customers to competitors, shareholders to Senators, employees to environmentalists. Because their interests are rarely aligned, their motives little understood, public relations professionals need to be able to deal with conflict and ambiguity.

Because some groups have particularly strong influence on others, they also need to understand the effects of audiences on each other. For example, employees make that all-important first impression on customers. That's why care must be taken to inform employees before announcing major decisions. Most studies of reengineering problems identified the neglect of building understanding among the workforce for changes to be the number one cause of failure. In an age of eroding loyalty between company and employees and tremendous competition for talent, company public relations staffs are increasingly looking for good communicators with strong backgrounds in organizational development and industrial relations.

While employees are stakeholders that have the strongest impact on a company's reputation, other audiences who have no stake in the company have the greatest credibility. The media, analysts and other third parties can be expected to be more objective, and often more critical. Convincing skeptical third parties is the primary -- and often the toughest -- job of public relations. It's in media relations and investor relations that corporate communicators have their greatest challenge. It takes a broad knowledge of business, the negotiating skills of a lawyer and a strong writing talent to hold one's own with a reporter digging for a story or an institutional investor with millions riding on the nuances of the explanation of a recent company event.

When things aren't going well, public relations professionals must become crisis managers. If a company goes into a crisis with a good reputation and solid relationships with its constituents and the media, the job is infinitely easier. A strong reputation is like an insurance policy, money in the bank for a rainy day. It probably won't help a company avoid a nasty story in the newspaper, but it may keep it to a one-day story rather than the continued hemorrhaging in the media that can take a toll on a company's sales, stock price and strategy.

Business experience and research has shown time and again that a good reputation helps a company sell its products, recruit the best and the brightest, and attract the most valuable business partners. Last month, Fortune Magazine reaffirmed the importance of reputation as it published its 17th annual ranking of "America's Most Admired Companies." Chosen in a poll of 10,000 corporate officers and directors and industry analysts, the top ten most admired companies had a total return to shareholders of 70.5%, compared to a 27.1% average return for the S&P 500. And the ten least admired had a return of -26.8%.