Coombs 4 – Crisis Prevention
Lauren Hames, Courtney Meyers & Jiun-Yi Tsai
This reading from Ongoing Crisis Communication will introduce you to the issues management process once a potential crisis has been identified, and that includes risk management and relationship building skills. The task: You will provide a 500 word comment that summarizes three key points that you don’t want your peers to miss in the chapter and raises at least three questions or discussion points for consideration by the class. Doc students: remember that you, especially, should be looking for theoretical points and not just application.
This reading from Ongoing Crisis Communication will introduce you to the issues management process once a potential crisis has been identified, and that includes risk management and relationship building skills. The task: You will provide a 500 word comment that summarizes three key points that you don’t want your peers to miss in the chapter and raises at least three questions or discussion points for consideration by the class. Doc students: remember that you, especially, should be looking for theoretical points and not just application.
posted by prteacher at
3/28/2007 06:24:00 AM
2 Comments:
We all agree the best practice in crisis management is to prevent crisis from happening. Thus, this chapter discussed three key approaches for organizations to avoid crises by taking actions on crisis warning signs and reducing its risk factors. Through this chapter, the author took a system and management perspective to address how to achieve crisis prevention.
First, issue management, defied as the “systematic procedures designed to influence the issue’s resolution in a manner favorable to the organization, centers on communicating the organization’s position on the issue to the stakeholders involved with the issue. How to evaluate the results of issue management lies in examining the final resolution of the issued. For example, if a pharmaceutical company is lobbying the congress for drug regulation, whether the legislation will be passed becomes an evaluation point. Are there any other criteria that can judge the efforts of issue management except the results? Is there any ethical concern here? If we are talking about consumer relations, the results of making profit in a responsible way are legitimate for profit companies. However, if the issues deals with lobbying for company’s interest, will the evaluation process still be result-driven?
Risk management, which we covered a lot in first half of the class, reduces the risk faced by an organization. The chapter explained two factors that drive the use of risk management strategies. One is cost-benefit analysis. When the costs from the risk outweigh the costs of risk reduction, organizations will consider taking action on it. The other is risk aversion process. Our team presentation will cover more factors in terms of risk management.
Finally, here comes the key catchphrase in public relations: relationship building. Staying in dialogue, building organizational credibility and meeting expectations with stakeholders are elements of favorable organization-public relationship. You may think nothing new but talking about maintaining two-way symmetrical communication.
As the relationship management paradigm of scholarly inquiry has evolved, a shift has occurred in which qualitative scholarship has given way to a greater emphasis on empirical scholarship to quantitatively test the influence that organization-public relationships have on key public members’ perceptions and behaviors. So far, research has validated the scale that measured organizational-public relationship. The four dimensions: trust, commitment, control mutuality and satisfaction originally come from interpersonal romantic relationship. How do these four dimensions fit into risk and crisis communication? Does it offer one-size-fit-all guideline for us to examine consumer relations, employee relations, community relations and so on? The connection between relationship management theory and underlying organizational performance is needed to be further investigated.
Organization credibility is a huge concept, too. One of many popular ways to measure company’s performance is the Delahaye reputation index. The index explains how major media cover about the company examining six dimensions: vision and leadership, social responsibly, emotional appeal, products and services, working environment and financial performance. The index could incorporate one dimension regarding organization credibility since publics put more emphasis on trustworthiness and expertise.
By
Jiun-Yi (Jenny) Tsai, at 1:42 AM
Crisis prevention requires planning
“The goal of crisis prevention is to defuse the crisis by attending to the warning signs and risks” (p. 39). Crises can be avoided (or at least downgraded) by practicing issues management, risk management/aversion, and relationship building. Appropriate issues management identifies what issues could potentially lead to crises. Through identification of these issues, risk aversion develops appropriate steps to prevent the crisis or the severity of a negative outcome. The risk management process can be applied to the current issue of the HPV vaccine legislation. This legislation was proposed to avoid the potential crisis of cervical cancer. By avoiding the HPV infection, which can lead to cancer, the risk is attenuated.
Crisis prevention requires conversation
The identification of issues is improved when an organization communicates openly with stakeholders. Through two-way communication, the organization can identify potential issues and stakeholders will be more willing to place trust in the organization in the event of a crisis. The key elements of relationship building are: staying close, credibility, and meeting expectations.
On page 45, the text refers to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) as an example of utilizing feedback from audience members to develop appropriate messages. The IMC process begins with the consumer and strives to build a relationship. To communicate effectively, marketers must define the target audience for the message. The marketer needs to understand what the audience knows or feels about the organization and how to use those characteristics to influence behavior. The target audience can be divided into individuals, groups, segments, or the general public. Each level requires different communication messages and media.
Crisis prevention requires change
The process of crisis prevention is achieved through two basic components: change and monitoring . Making a change to avoid a crisis is simple is explanation, but difficult in execution. The Theory of Planned Change fits in well with this aspect of crisis prevention. Burke (2002) explains the theory and explains how organizations can utilize it to help make changes.
Models of change provide a visual representation of the factors or characteristics in an organization. This representation allows viewers a snapshot of organizational change and all the elements that must be considered. According to Burke (2002), an organizational model helps categorize the thousands of disjointed pieces into 10 or 12 broad categories. In crisis prevention, change models can illustrate where potential events may occur and provide a guideline to address them. Burke (2002) said organizational models help enhance understanding of where efforts of change need to focus. If problems exist in only a few categories, this allows change agents to concentrate efforts on these areas.
Discussion questions:
The management of a risk is often left to individuals (e.g. smoking, drugs, drinking and driving, etc.). What can organizations do to make the risk seem important enough to encourage individuals to take action?
How can you best determine what changes are necessary to avoid a crisis?
How can you measure an organization’s credibility?
By
Courtney, at 6:00 PM
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