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Zaremba3e_Chapter10crisiscommunication11.ppt
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Chapter 10

Crisis Communication

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Chapter Preview

  • Describe what is meant by proactive crisis communication
  • Explain what is meant by stakeholder theory and image restoration theory
  • Identify, evaluate, and apply image restoration approaches
  • List the steps of a crisis communication plan
  • Construct a plan that can be used for communicating during crises in an organization to which you belong

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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What Is a Crisis?

  • Roemer defines a crisis as “any unanticipated event, incident, situation, or development that has the potential to damage or destroy your organization’s reputation.”

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Examples of Crises

  • At a university
  • An athletic director was found to have lied about his education
  • A fraternity hazing ritual led to a student injury
  • At a hospital
  • A well-respected doctor has been found guilty of insurance fraud
  • A doctor performs surgery on the wrong patient because of a mix-up in records
  • For a city government
  • A mayor is charged with sexual harassment
  • Four policemen are videotaped beating an unarmed man

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Components of Crisis Communication

  • Identifying internal and external receivers who must receive information during times of crisis
  • Crisis communication is both reactive and proactive
  • Involves “spinning” messages to make unattractive messages more attractive

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Why Study Crisis Communication?

  • All organizations are at risk of crises
  • Understanding the best way to react to potentially damaging situations can help decrease the problems associated with them
  • Effective crisis communication can help an organization restore damaged employee and consumer confidence

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Theory and Practice

  • Theory guides policies
  • Understanding theories allows organizations to understand what causes crises and how to best work through them
  • Two theories discussed are stakeholder theory and image restoration theory.

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Crisis Communication Planning

  • Organizations should establish proactive planning procedures
  • There will always be unanticipated crises, but having a plan to handle different types of crises helps an organization communicate effective messages more quickly and efficiently

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Steps to Crisis Communication Planning

Secure commitment from top management to be open and honest during crises

  • “Trustbusting” behaviors include
  • Stonewalling
  • Arrogance
  • Defensive threatening
  • Delaying
  • Disdain

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Steps to Crisis Communication Planning

Establish a crisis communication team

  • Have a diverse set of members in terms of experience, expertise, and culture
  • Make sure that your team has representatives to cover both internal and external constituencies and interested parties

Brainstorm potential crises

  • Try to think of all potential internal and external crises
  • Categories to evaluate crises include economic, informational, physical, human resources, reputational, psychopathic acts, and natural disasters (Mitroff).

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Steps to Crisis Communication Planning

Identify stakeholders and prepare appropriate messages

  • A stakeholder is someone who has a need for information from the organization during a crisis or someone to whom the organization needs to give information
  • Companies have both internal and external stakeholders
  • Stakeholder theory suggests that each group of stakeholders needs different types of information during a crisis
  • Messages need to be tailored for discrete populations, or the smallest units of people who need to receive targeted messages

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Steps to Crisis Communication Planning

Choose methods for communicating messages

Choose the best sequence for disseminating messages

  • Typically, those most directly affected should be notified first, followed by internal stakeholders, those who are indirectly affected, and then the news media (Lukaszewski).
  • Anticipate the need for follow-up messages

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Steps to Crisis Communication Planning

Identify spokespersons and establish a communication center

Record the plan

Coach and use simulations to see how well the plan operates

  • This will allow you to see how effective the plan really is in terms of timeliness and effective use of resources

Update periodically

  • Every three months the crisis team should review its plan and potential new threats and update contact information

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Theory

  • Image restoration theory asserts that when an organization loses legitimacy, it can restore its image by the use of symbols
  • The four Rs of restoration theory
  • Reputation of the company
  • The relationship that the organization has previously developed with stakeholders
  • The perceived responsibility the organization has for the evolution of the particular crisis
  • The quality of the response in terms of content and appropriate delivery

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Attack
  • Attempts to restore legitimacy by attacking those who are accusing the organization of wrongdoing
  • Bolstering
  • When spokespeople identify the achievements of an organization in an attempt to deflect attention from the specific crisis and highlight the organizational attributes
  • Compassion
  • Attempts to restore legitimacy by expressing consideration and compassion for those affected by the crisis

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Compensation
  • Compensating people who have lost something because of the crisis
  • Corrective action
  • Explaining to stakeholders that what the company is doing or will do will ensure that such a crisis will never happen again
  • Defeasibility
  • Sometimes organizations argue that blame should not be attributed to them because it does not make sense that they should be held responsible for actions that created a crisis

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Denial
  • A common, but often counterproductive approach to image restoration is to deny allegations that your company is responsible for the crisis—or to deny that there is a crisis at all
  • Differentiation
  • A technique used to explain why what has occurred in your situation is different from a similar event that involved another organization
  • Displacement
  • A very common image restoration technique in which an organization or person attempts to place the blame elsewhere

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Ingratiation
  • Involves identifying values that both the organization and stakeholders share and citing how the organization has upheld these values
  • Intimidation
  • An organization may employ intimidation to reduce charges that it has been delinquent
  • Minimization
  • An image restoration strategy used to downplay the significance and damage of a crisis
  • An organization could claim that a problem might only appear to have powerful repercussions

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Mortification
  • When an organization expresses its embarrassment or humiliation because of what has occurred
  • Often accompanied by an apology
  • Penitential and causal apologies
  • A causal apology expresses remorse but explains why there is a need for an apology
  • A penitential apology includes no causal explanation; it is simply a statement of remorse

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Image Restoration Approaches

  • Suffering
  • An organization suggests that it, too, has been victimized by a crisis
  • Transcendence
  • An organization juxtaposes the crisis with something more significant
  • Essentially, this response suggests that other issues transcend the one that is current and render this event insignificant

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Recommendations for Crisis Communicators

  • Respond quickly
  • Use your plan
  • Be accessible
  • Remember your internal stakeholders
  • Avoid silence and “no comment”
  • Be truthful

Zaremba/Organizational Communication, 3e, © 2010, by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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