This blog marks the start of ‘the crisis series’. Recent events (namely the horse meat crisis) have dragged communications strategy through the mud, and really made me question the stages of crisis management in an increasingly social world. This series of posts will investigate such events and the subsequent handling, as well as the lessons learnt by those in the spotlight.
An early definition of a crisis was suggested by Fearn-Banks:
“A major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting an organization, company, or industry, as well as publics, products, services or good name. It interrupts normal business transactions and can sometimes threaten the existence of the organization” (Fearn-Banks 1996: 1)
However this suggests that a crisis is purely a negative occurrence, which for 80% of organizations would be a true statement. However it was soon noted that a negative crisis can have a positive outcome which led to an amended definition being suggested by Coombs in 1999:
“An event that is an unpredictable, major threat that can have a negative effect on the organization, industry, or stakeholders if handled improperly” (Coombs 1999: 2)
Therefore would be assumed that Crisis Management plans should be at the top of any self-respecting organisation’s to do list. After all as Marconi (1992) stated “Bad things happen to even good organisations”. Simply by turning on the TV or logging onto any online news feed you’ll be faced with a barrage of train crashes, plane crashes, tampered packaging, manufacturing faults, product recalls and disease outbreaks. Most of which will be happening to highly respected organisations so organisations should be learning as much as possible about crisis preparation and management.
Firstly it should be noted that not all crisis are created equal, there are currently two schools of thought with regard to the approach to planning for a crisis:
The event approach
The traditional approach, which regards a crisis as an adverse event has been in use since the Tylenol crisis of 1982.
This so-called event approach led to a very logical conceptualization of crisis management as a largely tactical activity focused on incident response – what to do when a crisis occurs and how to prepare for it in case it happens.
From the perspective of organizational development, this traditional event approach typically positions crisis management structurally alongside operational or technical functions such as security or emergency response, often with public affairs tactically in support, mainly for media or community relations.
The process approach
More recent developments have seen a distinct tendency for crisis management to evolve beyond this operationalised response, and it is this reshaping of crisis management which has led to the need for new organizational design.
This ideology builds upon the recognition that crises are not always a sudden event and that managers can and should utilise a range of processes to flag, pre-empt and plan for a crisis; leading to far more effective mitigation and management if they do hit.
This distinction between crash management and crisis management was identified by Pauchant & Mitroff “Here we focus not only on crash management – what to do in the heat of a crisis – but also on why crises happen in the first place and what can be done to prevent them” (1992, p.11).
These findings suggest that crisis planning and management should not simply be a reactive linear process but instead an extension of daily life for a PR practitioner. When planning a campaign professionals should give in to that little niggling voice that proclaims “What if?”
The PR Crowd 