Crisis Communication and Crisis Management

An Ethical Approach

Burton St. John, Yvette E. Pearson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781483316154
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Studi sulla comunicazione

Crisis Communication and Crisis Management: An Ethical Approach is the only text on the market to provide students with the integration of ethical inquiry into the fundamentals of crisis communication.. Authors Burton St. John III and Yvette E. Pearson combine comprehensive coverage of the key skills, concepts, and theories of crisis communication with an extensive collection of contemporary case studies, giving students a strong understanding of the essential role that communicators play in moments of crisis. Students are encouraged to build upon their communication and ethical decision making skills using a variety of stakeholder inventories, hypothetical scenarios, discussion questions, and professional profiles. Students will also gain exposure to a mixture of discrete and ongoing crises, preparing them to manage both one-time crises and continuing crises.

Section 1 An Ethically Grounded Approach to Crisis Management

1 Fundamentals of Crisis Management and Ethics

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The end of 2013 brought the tragic account of Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old who had undergone a routine surgical procedure only to suffer serious postoperative complications that led doctors to declare her dead by neurological criteria (DNC) on December 12, 2013. McMath’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, was told that her daughter was “brain dead”; however, the fact that McMath remained connected to a ventilator meant that her heart and lungs were still functioning. So, while the young girl had been declared brain dead, which satisfies the legal criterion of death in all 50 U.S. states, her parents did not accept the claim that their daughter was dead. As Truog observed in an influential article on the concept of “brain death,” “most people find it counterintuitive to perceive a breathing patient as ‘dead.’” 1

The confusion surrounding the concept of brain death is pervasive. The aforementioned case led to a highly publicized disagreement between McMath’s family and the hospital. Additionally, scholars specializing in law and bioethics weighed in, mostly in support of the hospital’s decision to discharge McMath to the county coroner rather than send her home on a ventilator. According to many she was dead, but to her family she was still alive, albeit with assistance. A high-profile group, Not Dead Yet, raised concerns about media portrayals of the family as irrational and superstitious and also took offense at McMath being referred to as a “corpse.” Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, highlighted for the public the context in which this occurred; that is, one where the lives and health of black Americans have historically been undervalued. 2 Given that setting, it is little wonder that McMath’s family would be reluctant to place its trust in the medical profession, especially considering the pronouncement of death arrived on the heels of what appeared to be a serious oversight in postoperative patient management.

As we discuss later, this type of event fits our definition of a crisis—an event that is often unexpected, inherently disruptive, and greatly determined by the stakeholders of an institution (the “institution” in this case being the hospital and the medical profession). However, the concept of a crisis as well as crisis management practices may not be well understood by third parties who disseminate information about the crisis situation. For example, news media (and consequently, the general public’s) understanding of such terms as “crisis” or even the concept of resolving a crisis can be vague. Today’s resource constraints on journalism (e.g., fewer reporters covering a wider range of unfamiliar subjects) often mean that crises are shown as events that abruptly appear and just as quickly fade away, at least until the next iteration of the same type of crisis reappears. In reality, crises are often events that, while often unexpected, follow identifiable patterns that can aid in the anticipation and management of such occurrences. In this chapter, we illuminate not only the way scholars and practitioners have come to understand and describe the dynamics of crises but also how to manage them in an ethically sound manner.

Understanding Key Terms

Scholars of organizational communication offer several different definitions of a crisis. One definition identifies a crisis as a normally low-probability event that may be unforeseen and has a “vastly negative impact on the organization.” 3 In an approach that signifies that crisis is not only a threat but also a chance for an organization to grow, Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger described a crisis as “a specific, unexpected, and non-routine event or series of events that create high levels of uncertainty,” allowing the organization to face both threats and opportunities to its “high-priority goals.” 4 Coombs offered a definition that stresses the importance of those affected by the crisis: “A crisis is the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes.” 5 Pratt, after surveying two decades of crisis definitions, observed that a crisis “is a situation or event that can be organizationally unnerving, disruptive, or interruptive.” 6 We emphasize that while crises can and often do lead to harm, the realization of harm is not a necessary feature of crises. Instead, we understand a crisis to be an event that is often (but not always) unexpected, often determined by the perspectives of stakeholders, and can prove disruptive (for better or worse) to the status quo of the organization.

Coombs said that crisis management is about planning actions that are focused on combating a crisis or minimizing the harm from a crisis. 7 Similarly, business scholars have defined it as comprising activities an organization conducts in an attempt to keep a crisis from occurring or to “mitigate or soften” the impact of a crisis. 8 They define crisis management as a process of constantly surveying for potential problems in the organization’s internal and external environments and then assisting in the organization’s planning for a crisis and, if a crisis occurs, leading the organization successfully through that crisis and into learning and renewal. 9 Ulmer and colleagues accepted these stages of crisis management but also stressed the importance of repairing relationships after the crisis has passed. 10

The leading association for the public relations occupation, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), defines public relations as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” 11 A foundational textbook, one that PRSA has incorporated as a key resource into its accreditation program, similarly defines public relations as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.” 12

An often unacknowledged, yet essential, element that should be woven into the fabric of crisis management is the ability to identify and analyze the relevant ethical components of a situation. A failure to recognize and address ethical problems is a common contributor to crises. Ethics as an academic discipline is the systematic examination of moral agents and their actions. It has been a part of philosophical inquiry at least since Socrates wandered about Athens insisting that people care for their souls by pursuing knowledge of virtues (e.g., justice, wisdom, courage). Broadly construed, ethics examines “how we ought to live” 13 and includes ethical theory, meta-ethics, and practical ethics. Thus, ethics is different from, say, anthropology, which describes how people live. While this is interesting in its own right, ethical inquiry seeks to evaluate people’s character and actions rather than merely describe them. For instance, while we recognize that some children do bully others, to say that they should not do so is a normative ethical claim. When we claim that children should not bully others, we are also implying that the behavior is bad. So we are making a normative claim, evaluating the behavior, and then prescribing against it rather than simply describing what has occurred.

This volume introduces some of the theoretical foundations of ethical inquiry, but our primary focus is on practical ethics. Practical ethics is distinct from meta-ethics, which asks about our ability to have moral knowledge and describes the meanings of ethical terms (e.g., “right” and “good”). It is also distinct from ethical theory, which explores the formulation and defense of the foundations for ethical decisions (e.g., should ethical decisions be based on the consequences of our actions, or is motive the most important basis for ethical decisions?). With an emphasis on practical ethics, we examine the actions of moral agents and their reasons for acting as they do. Following Julia Annas’s characterization of ancient ethical schools, we assume ethics is not “a distinct compartment in one’s life.” 14 Being an agent with a particular kind of moral character will impact one’s actions, and our actions contribute to our development as moral agents. 15

The Stages of Crisis

Several scholars point to different ways of tracking the development of a crisis. Some observe that there are three distinct stages. Smith identified them as (1) precrisis (or crisis of management), (2) crisis (or the actual crisis), and (3) postcrisis (or the crisis of legitimacy). 16 The three-stage approach was adopted by Coombs, who added five substages: “signal detection” (or the identification of warning signs), prevention, preparation, recognition, and containment. 17 Fink, in a very early work on crisis, identified four stages: (1) prodromes (or warnings), (2) crisis eruption, (3) crisis effects (or lingering effects), and (4) crisis end. 18 Others have identified five stages that progress through detection, prevention, containment, recovery, and learning. 19 Regardless of the number of stages, all these descriptions point to a linear progression of a crisis—for example, a crisis does not go directly from the containment stage to learning. As we move through the various stages of a crisis, we must identify and examine various ethical considerations so that we can determine whether there are potential or actual ethical problems to address.

Major Communications Theories That Apply to Public Relations and Crises

Within the realm of public relations, two major theories that apply to crisis situations are stakeholder theory and symmetrical communication. Stakeholder theory focuses on identifying the varied audience segments that have a stake in the organization and then determining each audience’s level of importance so as to guide our strategic thinking and tactical choices. 20 Grunig and Repper and Fearn-Banks noted that this orientation especially accentuates the importance of building ongoing relationships before a crisis could ever develop. 21 The theory of symmetrical communication, articulated by Grunig and Hunt, describes the organization as not only sending out information to key audiences but actively seeking and receiving feedback from those stakeholders. They maintain that this is a beneficial stance because it allows public relations to function as mediator, working to foster mutual understanding. This approach may also facilitate identification of stakeholders’ interests and therefore surface potential gaps between “corporate practice and stakeholder expectations.” 22

Theories more directly related to crisis scenarios are corporate apologia, image repair theory, situational crisis communication theory, and complexity theory. Corporate apologia theories center primarily on a range of rhetorical approaches that attempt to manage the crisis. 23 These theories examine how corporations use a mix of apology, denial, counterattack, and other methods in a primarily defensive posture. Originally, apologia research centered on how individuals, particularly politicians, used various defensive techniques while dealing with a crisis; in the last 20 years, however, the study of apologia has also tracked its use by large retail operations (e.g., Abercrombie & Fitch), nonprofit organizations (e.g., the American Red Cross), and manufacturers (e.g., Firestone). 24

Image repair theory, while similar to apologia, focuses more on actions that not only attempt to manage the threat but also repair any damage done to the image of the actor accused of promulgating the crisis. Within this theory, there are various approaches that appear similar to apologia methods: Denying, shifting blame, minimizing harm, and attacking the accuser are some image repair strategies. However, this line of analysis of crisis also stresses th...