Crisis Communication

Managing Stakeholder Relationships

Audra Diers-Lawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429793875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

Crises come in many shapes and sizes, including media blunders, social media activism, extortion, product tampering, security issues, natural disasters, accidents, and negligence – just to name a few. For organizations, crises are pervasive, challenging, and catastrophic, as well as opportunities for organizations to thrive and emerge stronger.

Despite the proliferation of research and books related to crisis communication, the voice that is often lost is that of the stakeholder. Yet, as both a public relations and management function, stakeholders are central to the success and failure of organizations responding to and managing crises in a cross-platform and global environment. This core textbook provides a comprehensive and research-driven introduction to crisis communication, critical factors influencing crisis response, and what we know about predicting stakeholder responses to crises. Incorporated into each chapter are global case studies, ethical challenges, and practitioner considerations. Online resources include an extensive set of multimedia materials ranging from podcast mini-lectures to in-class exercises, and simulation-based activities for skills development (https://audralawson.com/resources/crisis-communication-managing-stakeholder-relationships/).

Demonstrating the connection between theory, decision-making, and strategy development in a crisis context, this is a vital text for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Communications, Public Relations, Marketing, and Strategic Management.

Part 1
Crisis communication and the stakeholder relationship management perspective

What do media blunders, social media activism, extortion, product tampering, security issues, natural disasters, accidents, and negligence all have in common? They are crises. For organizations, they can be ever-present, challenging, catastrophic, and even opportunities for organizations to thrive and emerge stronger.

The first research on crisis communication was published in the early 1950s and since then the field has grown steadily. However, since 2010 there has been an explosion of theory development, international engagement, methodological diversity, and topic diversity reflecting the growing multinational and multi-platform environment in which organizations and people interact.

Despite the proliferation of research, collections of articles, and books related to crisis communication, the voice that is often lost is the stakeholder’s voice. As both a public relations and management function, stakeholders are central to the success and failure of organizations responding to and managing crises in a cross-platform global environment.

In Part 1 of this textbook, I will begin by exploring what crisis communication is from the stakeholder relationship management perspective. In Chapter 1 I will focus on the evolution of crisis communication as a field of study and practice. Chapter 2 will situate crisis communication within public relations and management. Finally, Chapter 3 will provide the stakeholder relationship management perspective that will ground the rest of the book.

1
Introducing crisis communication as a field of practice

Learning objectives

By the end of this chapter, the reader should:

• Understand the evolution of the field of crisis communication from the 1950s to present
• Be introduced to the five critical factors driving knowledge and research in crisis communication
• Reflect on the state of crisis communication’s research and practice

Defining crisis, crisis communication in a 21st century context

From the first study of crises and crisis communication in the mid-20th century to the turn of the century, crises were generally thought of as a “low probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of the organization and is characterized by ambiguity of cause, effect, and means of resolution, as well as by a belief that decisions must be made quickly” (Pearson & Clair, 1998, p. 60). This definition of crisis was supported by a small body of research that had emerged throughout the previous 40 years.

However, while both practitioners and academics recognized that crises are challenging because they are often ill-structured and complex (Mitroff, Alpaslan, & Green, 2004), they had also witnessed a growing and diverse number of crises like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the Iran–Contra Affair of the mid-to-late 1980s, the American Red Cross tainted-blood scandal in the early 1990s, Enron’s accounting scandal of 2001, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. As a result of the risks posed by modern crises in an information-rich world, the research interest in crisis management and crisis communication began to grow substantially.

These new experiences with crisis demonstrated that crises can affect all types of organizations. The causes of the crises can range from circumstances entirely out of an organization’s control to careless mistakes of individuals within an organization, to systematic breakdowns or inefficiencies (Argenti, 2002; King, 2002; Pearson & Clair, 1998; Reilly, 1987). With the growth of interest in crises, crisis management, and crisis communication, how we define a crisis has also evolved. Instead of thinking of crises and low-probability and high impact events with ambiguous causes and outcomes, we should be thinking of crises differently.

Defining a Crisis

A crisis is typically defined as an untimely but predictable event that has actual or potential consequences for stakeholders’ interests as well as the reputation of the organization… .

That means a crisis can harm stakeholders and damage the organization’s relationship with them… .

Respond well and survive the crisis; respond poorly and suffer the death of the organization’s reputation and perhaps itself.

(Heath and Millar, 2004 p. 2)

Heath and Millar’s (2004) definition of crisis provides us with a few important characteristics of crises that seem to be consistent across different types of crisis, in different parts of the world, and with different levels of blame and severity. First, crises are inherently public in nature (Moore, 2004); therefore, to understand crisis management, we ought to understand the nature of crisis communication. In fact, what should be clear in Heath and Millar’s definition of crisis (2004) is that strategic planning around crisis risk ought to be an inherent part of doing business in the 21st century. Second, while crises happen to or because of an organization, organizations do not exist in isolation. Crises affect people – people within the organization, its community, country, and region(s) in which an organization operates. This means that crisis management and crisis communication should always be focused on the people and groups with an interest in the organization and its activities – that is, its stakeholders (Freeman, 1999). Third, the core stake at risk in a crisis is the relationship between an organization and its stakeholder(s). If this relationship fails, then the outcomes of that failure can range from reputational damage to the failure of the organization and/or its mission. Likewise, if the relationship is strengthened, then an organization can prosper despite the crisis – or perhaps even because of the crisis.

This definition of a crisis also suggests there are two parts to crisis response. The first is the material crisis response – that is, solving the problem that triggered the crisis. The material crisis response can include mitigating the effects of the crisis, recovery of control of the situation, fact finding, and or damage control. Part 1 focuses on crisis communication. Crisis communication involves three equally important elements.

• Stakeholder relationship management: Managing, building, or re-building stakeholder relationships
• Narrating the crisis: Media engagement and direct stakeholder engagement across different platforms of communication – from face-to-face to social media
• Communication strategy development and implementation: A campaign-based approach using measurable objectives, good intelligence, and continual evaluation of the effectiveness of the approach

However, if we ask this question – What is crisis communication? – differently, the question is more challenging to answer because there are many concepts and factors that influence the stakeholder relationship management process, being able to effectively narrative a crisis, and development and implementing crisis strategy. Figure 1.1 provides us with a collection of the most important key words and concepts connected to the global study of crisis communication for the last 60–70 years. Thus, answering the question of what crisis communication is, is challenging. This is what I will explore throughout this textbook.

It is from this point that I move forward in Chapter 1 to explore the field, its evolution, and ultimately the five critical factors that influence crisis communication and ground this textbook.

Growth and change within the field of crisis communication

The past 60–70 years has seen the field of crisis communication emerge as a cross-disciplinary field of study and begin to coalesce into a distinctive field within the last decade. There are noteworthy figures who have meaningfully contributed to the intellectual growth of the field and the emergence of a genuinely global community of scholars and scholar practitioners including William Benoit, Glenn Cameron, Timothy Coombs, Sherry Halliday, Robert Heath, Finn Frandsen, Yan Jin, Winnie Johansen, Brian Reber, Andreas Schwarz, Matthew Seeger, Tim Sellnow, and Deanna Sellnow, to name some of the most influential. Yet the growth in the number of studies published in crisis communication in the last ten years (see Figure 1.2) suggests that we are beginning to see a diverse group of voices and perspectives emerging in the field. This section will not only highlight the developments in the field of crisis communication but also identify the key areas of practice and differences in approach within them.

Figure 1.1Dominant themes in the field of crisis communication

In addition to the growth and emergence of crisis communication as a field of practice in public relations (PR) and an area of academic study in communication, within the last several years there has also been an interest in reflecting on the field. In academic contexts, this navel gazing usually involves meta-analyses of the research available on the subject of interest – essentially, collecting all of the research available within certain parameters and then reviewing it to identify the core themes that emerge. While it is as nerdy as it seems, it does serve an important function. Think of this as an academic stock check to identify what we have done, what we have not done, and so prescribe what we should be doing in the near future to improve the field. There have been three such analyses of crisis communication in recent years. One tracked trends in PR scholarship (Kim, Choi, Reber, & Kim, 2014), one examined crisis communication’s interdisciplinary approach (Ha & Boynton, 2014), and one analyzed all available research connected to crisis communication across academic journals (Diers-Lawson, 2017a, 2017b).

Figure 1.2Growth of the field of crisis communication over time

My interest in...