Responding to Crisis

A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication

Dan Pyle Millar, Robert L. Heath, Dan Pyle Millar, Robert L. Heath

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135640231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have explored the nature, theory, and best practices that are required for effective and ethical crisis preparation and response. The consequences of being unprepared to respond quickly, appropriately, and ethically to a crisis are dramatic and well documented. For this reason, crisis consulting and the development of crisis response plans and protocols have become more than a cottage industry.
Taking a rhetorical view of crisis events and utterances, this book is devoted to adding new insights to the discussion, and to describing a rhetorical approach to crisis communication. To help set the tone for that description, the opening chapter reviews a rhetorical perspective on organizational crisis. As such it raises questions and provokes issues more than it addresses and answers them definitively. The other chapters can be viewed as a series of experts participating in a panel discussion. The challenge to each of the authors is to add depth and breadth of understanding to the analysis of the rhetorical implications of a crisis, as well as to the strategies that can be used ethically and responsibly. Central to this analysis is the theoretic perspective that crisis response requires rhetorically tailored statements that satisfactorily address the narratives surrounding the crisis which are used by interested parties to define and judge it.
This volume will be of value to scholars and students interested in crisis communication, and is certain to influence future work and research on responding to crises.

CHAPTER

1

A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication: Management, Communication Processes, and Strategic Responses

Robert L. Heath

University of Houston

Dan P. Millar

Millar Communication Strategies, Inc., Indianapolis, IN

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have explored the nature, theory, and best practices that are required for effective and ethical crisis preparation and response. The consequences of being unprepared to respond quickly, appropriately, and ethically to a crisis are dramatic and well documented. For this reason, crisis consulting and the development of crisis response plans and protocols have become more than a cottage industry. Agencies devote part of their business toiling for their clients and employers who are in trouble or who want to avert trouble by proper strategic planning. Responding to this challenge, researchers and practitioners want to know best practices of crisis planning and response.

Public relations literature is littered with case studies of organizations which lost brand equity, suffered damage to products, services, and lost issue positions because of inept handling of crises preparation and response. A classic example of crisis damage occurred in 2000 when the actuality and potentiality of death and bodily harm drove Bridgestone/Firestone stock share value to less than half of what it had been before the crisis. That crisis cost the company lots money and a ton of consumer good will.

Taking a rhetorical view of crisis events and utterances, this book is devoted to adding new insights to the discussion. The book describes a rhetorical approach to crisis communication. To help set the tone for that description, this chapter begins with a review of definitions of crisis, moves to offer a rhetorical definition of crisis, and then explores the intellectual, theoretical, and best practices implications of this approach to crisis planning and response. The following chapters address unique contributions to a rhetorical view of crisis management by centering their attention on one of the stages of crisis preparation and response: precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis.

CRISIS DEFINED: DAMAGING EVENTS AND TURNING POINTS

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 suffering the crisis. That means a crisis can harm stakeholders and damage the organization’s relationship with them. This harm to stakeholders and damage to reputation can haunt the organization regardless of its responsibility. The organization must respond in many ways to put the minds of its stakeholders at ease about the organization’s responsibility for creating or allowing the crisis to occur. The responsibility issue needs to be put to rest to demonstrate that the organization can regain control over its activities so that the crisis no longer exists or no longer harms stakeholders. The manner in which the organization addresses this responsibility serves as a turning point for it: Respond well and survive the crisis; respond poorly and suffer the death of the organization’s reputation and perhaps itself.

With this brief overview, we launch our discussion of crisis by focusing on the bad news day of a company. Having defined crisis in conceptual terms, let’s focus even more on the actual character of crisis.

Crisis exists when the media are knocking on your door and you would rather they were not. Crisis exists when employees don’t want their friends and relatives to know who they work for while hoping that a different company is looking for persons with their experience and talents. Crisis occurs when customers are looking to your competitors for a better and safer product. A crisis exists when traders are selling your stock in hopes of getting out before the bottom falls out. Crisis exists when stakeholders are calling for legislative or regulatory hearings to regulate and punish the offending organization.

Crisis exists in the new communication technology age—cyberspace—when you read allegations on a Web site or in an email about your personnel, organization, products, or services that are absolutely untrue. Rumors are a special kind of crisis—at times even more provoking in cyberspace. Rumors are often not based on fact but are frequently based on narrow or misinformed interpretations of fact. Such was the case when an Internet rumor alleged that sodium laureth sulfate was a known carcinogen. Actually, this chemical is a sudsing agent used in leading brand shampoos and toothpastes—each named in the email circulated through highly credible family—friendship networks. Web site messages were placed to combat this misinterpretation and disinformation campaign’s rhetorical attack. The rumor campaign may have been a case of cybersabotage enacted by a competitor to the name brand products. To combat this attack, advocates provided credible information on the safety of this chemical and discredited the message by demonstrating that it was factually inaccurate. One inaccuracy was that Canada Health had banned the substance; it had studied the chemical and found it to be safe. Another inaccuracy was that the researcher who was alleged to have discovered the carcinogenic nature of the substance simply did not exist. The cybersabotage was a fabrication of fact, but without timely informed response it would have damaged the brand equity of leading products.

Similar characteristics of crisis can be used to recall the bad times experienced by governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. For instance, you might remember the scandals associated with salary and fees charged by the head of a national nonprofit or by the failure of a governmental agency to respond properly during a terrible hurricane. Each of these crises consists of an event, or series of events, that gives stakeholders reason to believe that the leadership of the organization has lost control of the organization’s operations in ways that harm its stakeholders.

Rhetorically speaking, crisis can harm the organization’s efforts to create understanding and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with interested parties whose support and good will the organization needs. If unattended or poorly managed, the crisis can prevent the organization from making satisfactory and expected progress toward achieving its mission, because stakeholders and stakeseekers come to doubt the organization’s ability or willingness to properly control its activities to assure their health, safety, and well-being. A crisis results in actual or negative consequences for the health, safety, and well-being of others. The organization’s reputation is harmed. If poorly managed, the crisis may mature into a public policy issue and affect the organization’s ability to compete in the marketplace.

Typical definitions may allude to the communication responses—precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis—but rarely go into detail on that subject. Stressing the strain on organizations’ ability to adapt and cope, Barton (1993) defined crisis as “A situation faced by an individual, group or organisation which they are unable to cope with by the use of normal routine procedures and in which stress is created by sudden change” (p. 86). Other views expand the consequences of disrupting routines and creating stress.

• Crisis interrupts normal business activities. Crisis management/communication is a corporate strategy for dealing with a major business interruption.

• Crisis may result from management decisions to implement the organization’s strategic plan, such as the crisis resulting from a major layoff of employees. Although the kind of event that results in a crisis can be predicted, the specific time of the occurrence may not be foretold. Some events, such as massive layoffs can be foretold and even timed. One large company, working with a national consulting firm, chose April 1 as the date for announcing to the employees which ones would be laid off. “April Fool—no, you really are laid off!!!”

• Crisis can damage the reputation of the organization and prevent management from accomplishing its mission and strategic plan.

• Crisis can harm the organization’s efforts to create understanding and foster mutually favorable relationships with stakeholders.

• Crisis can mature into a public policy issue. Conversely, a public policy issue can become a crisis. Ask the tobacco industry.

• Crisis can weaken the organization’s ability to compete in the marketplace.

• Crisis can be described by several characteristics: magnitude, duration, locus of cause, locus of responsibility, emergency response (timely and effective), and restoration/resolution.

• Crisis can result in damage that is actual, an explosion, or merely apparent, as in the case of an unfounded rumor (e.g., the number of cases of a medical problem—such as cancer or asthma—ostensibly experienced by residents who live in a community near chemical plants).

• Crisis often prompts an emotional response by key stakeholders. A crisis evokes emotion because interests are damaged—or at least appear to be (Mitroff & Pearson, 1993; Pauchant & Mitroff, 1992).

• Crisis is an extraordinary event that results in “an unstable time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending” (Fink, 1986, p. 15).

• “Crises are characterized by low probability of high consequence events that threaten the most fundamental goal of an organization” (Weick, 1988, p. 305).

• “A critical incident or a crisis is simply a sudden, unexpected event that poses an institutional threat suggesting the need for rapid, high level decision-making” (Paschall, 1992, p. 4).

• Crisis entails events and outcomes about which key stakeholders make attributions regarding cause and responsibility (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). “Crises are threats, meaning that they actually do or have the potential to create negative or undesirable outcomes” (Coombs, 1999b, p. 2). “Crisis management represents a set of factors designed to combat crises and lessen the actual damage inflicted by the crisis” (Coombs, 1999b, p. 4).

• “A crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting an organization, company, industry, as well as its publics, products, services, or good name” (Fearn-Banks, 1996, p. 1).

• A crisis “is an event that brings, or has the potential for bringing, an organization into disrepute and imperils its future profitability” (Lerbinger, 1997, p. 4).

• Crisis is a strain on the reward—cost balance between an organization and key stakeholders who can work to impose constraints on the organization’s activities thereby costing it additional resources (Stanley, 1985).

• A crisis is a major business (organization) disruption which generates intense media interest and public scrutiny (Irvine & Millar, 1998).

Crisis has potential or actual consequences for the organization. Crises come in various shapes and sizes. They have magnitude, duration, and culpability. Crises make others attend to your business.

These definitions feature the dynamics of a crisis, but do not suggest the communication options and functions that are required by a crisis. The next section corrects this slight by stressing that in addition to the preparations that are necessary for a timely and ethical response to crisis, timely, ethical, and strategic message development and delivery are crucial. Thus, we have the rationale for a rhetorical definition of crisis.

A RHETORICAL DEFINITION OF CRISIS

As was emphasized in the previous section, typical definitions of crisis emphasize damage, actual or potential. They focus on consequences for relationships and reputations. They suggest response options and processes that may be needed to combat or abate the damage of the crisis.

A rhetorical definition moves the needle a bit further. A rhetorical approach to crisis explicitly acknowledges that the responsibility for the crisis, its magnitude, and its duration are contestable. It stresses the message development and presentation part of the crisis response. It underscores the role that information, framing, and interpretation play in the organization’s preparation for a crisis, response to it, and postcrisis comments and actions. It features discourse, one or more statements made over time.

Central to a rhetorical analysis of crisis is the concept of a rhetorical problem. A rhetorical problem arises when exigencies (i.e., occurrences and statements) call for a statement from one or more persons or organizations (Bitzer, 1968). Organizations and individuals, because of their role in society or in the crisis, are looked to for a statement that is a wise, ethical, and strategic response to a rhetorical problem.

A rhetorical definition of crisis features the communication processes and efforts to co-define meanings that assist ...