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Stu A:

Organizational culture has a lot to do with an organization's pre-crisis communication and the mindsets of its external and internal stakeholders. Alan (2010) presented that "organization cultures are a composite of shared organizational values, customs and beliefs". For instance, if an organization has a corporate culture of "no chitchat and comment", thus a mindset of no comment will form unwittingly and will inevitably resist effective communication with key stakeholders in a crisis. 

The case I'm thinking about is Enron's downfall back in 2001. The informant, Sherron Watkins, who has been regarded for holding her ethical standards as a vice president in Enron since she was the one who tried to expose the accounting fraud and the potential loss of Enron. Finally, she blew the whistle in spite of the pressure from her executives and the radical corporate culture since many employees chose to stay silence under the strict corporate atmosphere (Turnage & Keyton, 2013, pp. 87-95).

Enron has a strict "hierarchy" of performance ranking process among peers. To retain their jobs, employees in Enron were more inclined to stop asking questions and focus on the endless  work. Also, when the crisis was imminent, the founder of Enron, Ken Lay, secretly sold 20$ millions of Enron's stock and told its internal and external stakeholders the stock was still a good buy until Enron collapsed (Turnage & Keyton, 2013). 

Enron's radical corporate culture played a key role in its downfall. More ethical standards and rules would promote those who have the ability and courage to speak out the truth before crisis happens, whereas the opposite culture brings about insidious outcomes and holds people's emotions in check --- undermines efforts at being transparent before the crisis (Alan, 2010, p. 54). 

Another thing I want to mention is that, under such "reticence" culture in Enron, it's also hard and tough for the internal stakeholders to speak out and even influence the way they choose to communicate. The first action Watkins took when she realized the potential crisis was to write a confidential memo to her executives. Also, she was worried about her personal safety problems. So, the process was ineffective and struggling since the culture was so radical and some people in Enron still showed extreme loyalty to Enron.

Best,

Lina

References

Alan, Z. (2010). Crisis Communication: Theory and Practice. New York. PA: Taylor & Francis Group.

Turnage, A., & Keyton, J. (2013). Ethical Contradiction and E-mail Communication at Enron Corporation. Case studies in Organizational Communication: Ethical Perspectives and Practices. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. 

Stu b:

To what extent can organizational culture affect pre-crisis relationships with internal and external stakeholders? I would say that whether or not the employees have the identity of representing the organization or the position of the company. Keyton (2011) site another author in his book mentioned “The first goal should be to generate insight about cultural processes by understanding how individuals create sense and meaning at a particular time and location,  and to demonstrate how our sensemaking of our work lives articulates basic information about cultural processes” (p.g. 81)

I worked as a PR in LE MERIDIEN TAIPEI HOTEL in 2014. When the day we were onboard, all of the employees need to have three days of orientation training. The orientation aimed to show employees about what is “LE MERIDIEN” this brand represents, what the employees should be like when working in LE MERIDIEN, the smell of the hotel, what the the wording we should use, even the hotel has its specific brand color, which was Mid-Century Blue, and the other sort of Tiffany Blue color. All this action was to train employees to immerse in the organization culture and to indicate that how employees they are representing not merely their position but also the image of the organization.

Once there was huge food safety issue happened in other five starts buffet restaurant, and soon we received a call from reporters want to see if our restaurant have same problems, but the more drastic way and tried to lead you to the wrong direction that they would love to report. The primary responsibility of PR is to promote the reputation of their brand while also maintain a good relationship with the media. After checking with the chief in our buffet restaurant about the resources of the food and made sure there was no problem, we soon replied to the media that our food resource was 100% okay and welcomed them for lunch to try our buffet. I believe that all the action was because every employee feels that they are part of the organization and have the identification for the company. Otherwise, we don’t need to care so much about whether or not it would cause harm to the brand.

Reference:

Keyton, J. (2011). Communication and organizational culture: A key to understanding work experience. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.