Concise Introduction to Crisis Management

Communication is the act of transmitting information between two or more entities – it is the public relations practitioner’s duty to be a master of communication. Now that duty is chock-full of specialties that range from publicity, persuasion, and image building to writing press releases and dealing with laws and regulations. Between all of the fun, however, and perhaps one of the most important duties of a practitioner, lies crisis communication and management.

 Crisis management is a public relations specialty where practitioners strategically deal with a shared stress between an organization and it stakeholders which causes a breakdown in their mutually beneficial relationship. Practitioners seek to soften the impact of a crisis, or, rather "prevent or lessen the negative outcomes of a crisis and thereby protect the organization, stakeholders, and industry from harm" (Coombs, 2015, p. 5). 

Now, there are a few key terms that anyone getting their feet wet should understand beforehand. For example, there are issues then crises, and, subsequently, an organizational crisis and a disaster. Issues are situations that present matters of concern to anyone involved with the organization and exist because of changing environments. Issues management roughly deals with anticipating emerging issues and responding to them before they become a crisis. In the four steps designed to combat crisis, this would fall into the category of prevention. If a practitioner and its organization fail to deal with emerging issues, then you will find yourself with a crisis. 

A 'stakeholder'. 

A crisis has two components: an organizational crisis and a disaster, each with their own set of circumstances. There are disasters, which are "sudden, [that] seriously disrupt the routine of systems, [and] require new courses of action to cope with the disruption" (Coombs, 2015, p. 3); and there are organizational crises, which are perceptual and based on socially constructed meanings. "If stakeholders believe an organization is in a crisis, a crisis does exist, and stakeholders will react to the organization as if it is in crisis" (Coombs, 2015, p. 3). To combat the latter, "management must be able to see the event from a stakeholders' perspective to properly assess whether a crisis has occurred" (Coombs, 2015, p. 3). In short, disasters can be something as unpredictable as Hurricane Katrina or self-inflicted such as the BP oil-spill; organizational crises are almost as unpredictable, but they shouldn't be unexpected. Every smart individual understands that negative situations can occur and therefore they prepare themselves for such an occurrence. The same holds true in public relations and falls into the preparation category of crisis management. 

Crisis management is a combination of strategies and tactics used and designed to combat emerging issues before they have the chance to become crisis and to lessen the damage of actual crises. Crisis management has four categories that are all interrelated:

PREVENTION: represents the steps taken to avoid crisis (Coombs, 2015, p. 5) and involves concepts such as issues management (mentioned earlier). Imagine this like treating the cough before the sickness. You see the warning signs and you address the issue before it gets worse. Sometimes, you cannot and that leads us to preparation.

PREPARATION: This includes the CMP (crisis management plan) – every organization should have one, if not, get one. Preparation involves diagnosing potential vulnerabilities in your campaign and addressing them in such a way that can assist you in the future.

RESPONSE: Think: it’s happening, we need to respond. “Response is the application of the preparation components to a crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 5). The overall purpose of the response phase is to recover from the crisis.

REVISION: Every aspect of any public relations practitioner’s duty requires some form of evaluation – crisis management is not exempt from evaluation. This stage involves determining the rights and wrongs of its actions during the CMP. In this stage you learn what to do next time. 

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In short, crisis management is an ongoing process of which we  covering throughout the duration of this particular blog. There are many components to crisis management including Ian Mitroff's five phases of crisis management and Fink's four staged model. Additionally, we have the traditional three-staged model of crisis management to observe. The aforementioned is merely an introduction to crisis management in the hopes of briefly visiting some of its core components. As much as our topic is an ongoing process, as is our blog. However, just as it is important in every other facet of public relations, communication, the act of communicating, is essential in crisis management. 

References

               Agnes, M. (2015, May 07). The Secret to Successful Crisis Management in the 21st Century - Melissa Agnes TEDx Talk. Retrieved January 15, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQGEPEaEWtg

Coombs, W. (. (2015). Ongoing Crisis Communication. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Hiller, S. (2016, April 19). Public Relations Functions: Crisis Management. Retrieved January 15, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybtq_Z10lQY

Ian, M. (2015, July 14). Crisis Management Strategies: Ian Mitroff on Successfully Managing Crises. Retrieved January 15, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzzLKQ3_lAI