Crisis Communication

1. THE CRISIS MITIGATION
PROCESS: BUILDING CRISIS
RESISTANT ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER 3

2. MAIN CONTENT
 Observe: Finding Red Flags
 Orient: Collect the Information
 Orient: Analyze the Information
 Decide and Act: Take Preventive Action
 Evaluate the Effectiveness of the Threat Reduction
 Paracrises: A Review of Action and Evaluation

3. LEARNING OUTCOME
 LO1: Identify organisational, industrial and environmental challenges and
disasters
 LO2: Demonstrate an understanding of the concepts, theories and practice of
issues management and crisis communication
 LO3: Analyse and develop strategies for organisational issues using the theories,
models and methods of issues management and crisis communication
 LO5: Develop a critical attitude towards crisis communications management
 LO6: Identify and apply ethical standards of practice when dealing with issues
management and crisis communication

4. OVERVIEW
 Impossible to make an organization completely immune from all
crises
“crisis resistant” instead of “crisis proofing”
 Crisis Mitigation:
 lessen the occurrence or the effects of a crisis
 take actions designed to eliminate a crisis threat or to reduce
the likelihood of the threat manifesting into a crisis
 about finding and responding to red flags

5. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
Observing involves understanding:
 where to look for crisis risks
 the most challenging aspect
 sources of risk: both external and
internal to the organization
 how to collect the information

6. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External risks:
 Environmental scanning:
 popular tool in issues management; focuses on external risks
 watching and listening to the environment for changes, trends,
events, and emerging social, political, or health issues
 crisis managers must consider the sources involved that would
be helpful in locating warning signs

7. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources - Issues management:
 Media:
 Traditional news media
 Digital channels and platforms found online
 Case studies/information about crises in similar organizations:
 valuable resource for crisis managers
 allowing crisis teams to learn from someone else’s crisis

8. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources:
 Media – News:
 Leading or elite
newspapers
 News and business
magazines
 Television news
programs (including
TV news magazines)
Image source: Hashmeta

9. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources:
 Media - Other useful sources:
 Trade outlets
 Trade journals, other publications, blogs, websites
 Medical or scientific journals and websites
 Newsletters (include reports published by special interest groups,
foundations, and government agencies)
 Public opinion surveys

10. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources:
 Individuals:
 Public opinion experts
 The organization’s own stakeholders
 Activists
 Influencers
 examining the digital communication channels and platforms

11. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources:
 Digital communication channels and platforms:
 Discussion groups
 Message boards and forums
 Web pages
 Dedicated complaint sites
 Blogs, microblogs
 Content-sharing sites
 Aggregators
 Social bookmarking sites
 Social networking sites
 etc

12. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
External sources:
 Digital communication channels and platforms:
 more than a source of risk: used to anticipate and respond to
potential problems/ possibly avoid emerging problems
 serve as a dual information source: access information also found in
print or broadcast form; collect information unique to social media
 Dashboard: a technique for simplifying data reporting by displaying
a small number of important summary measures together in one
location

13. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
Internal sources - Risk management:
 Total quality management
 Environmental crisis exposure
 Legal compliance audits
 Financial audits
 Personnel and the organizational
culture Image source: Hayco’s Official Website

14. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
Internal sources - Risk management:
 Traditional insurance coverage
 liability exposure
 criminal exposure
 worker compensation exposure
 Natural disaster exposure
2020 Central Vietnam floods
Image source: vnexpress.net

15. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
Internal sources - Risk management:
 Safety, maintenance, and accident records
 Product-tampering monitoring
 Employee use of digital channels and platforms, and email
 Behavior profiling
 Ethical climate surveys

16. OBSERVE: FINDING RED FLAGS
Sources for Reputation monitoring:
 Shareholder resolutions
 Stakeholder complaints and inquires
Table 3.1

17. DISCUSSION
1. Why should managers bother identifying red flags?
2. Does it make sense to distinguish between traditional websites
and social media, or should we treat all online communication
channels and platforms the same?

18. ORIENT: COLLECT THE INFORMATION
Most frequently used collection tools:
Data scrapping or harvesting
(extracting data from digital channels and
platforms)
Interviews
Focus groups
Surveys
Informal contacts

19. ORIENT: COLLECT THE INFORMATION
Soliciting information from stakeholders:
 Construct a stakeholder map that lists all possible stakeholders
 Identify the stakeholders relevant to the most highly ranked crises
 Use interviews, surveys, focus groups, or key contacts to collect
information from stakeholders

20. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Information analysis:
 determine whether collected information contains crisis risks
 the process of understanding if and how a warning sign might
impact the organization

21. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Content analysis:
 the systematic coding and classification of written materials
 converts the written information into quantifiable data - the words
become numbers that can be analyzed using statistics
 requires the development of coding categories and expertise in
using the categories

22. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Content analysis:
 Coding categories:
 boxes in which discrete pieces of information are placed
 must be mutually exclusive
 each category needs a thorough written definition that indicates
what is appropriate for it

23. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Content analysis:
 Coders:
 must be trained
 must be able to place similar messages in the same categories
reliability:
• allows different people to code messages consistently
• allows for comparisons of the coded data

24. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Content analysis:
 Examples:
 Organizations establish categories for accidents and safety
violations
 Organizations develop categories for coding customer complaints
know the type and frequency of different varieties of complaints

25. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Computer-based content analysis:
 Help identify key words, sentiment, and frames in crisis messages
 Key words can be indicators of a risk or crisis
 Sentiment analysis indicates if the messages are positive or
negative for an organization
 Content of the messages

26. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Data analysis - Other metrics:
 Total mentions: aggregate of mentions about an organization or
product
 Total impressions: potential audience reached by the messages
 Duration of the digital discussion

27. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Threat assessment analysis:
Crisis Threat = Likelihood x Organizational Impact x Stakeholder Impact
(Score: 1 – lowest; 10 – highest)
 Likelihood: the probability that a threat will become a crisis
 Impact: the effect the crisis can have on stakeholders and organization

28. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Threat assessment analysis:
Likelihood Impact
For issues
the probability of an issue
gaining momentum
how strongly the issue can affect
profits, reputations, or operations
For risks
the probability that the risk can
or will become an event
how much the event might impact
the organization and its stakeholders
For
reputation
evaluation is not as clearly developed; a little more complex

29. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Threat assessment analysis - For reputation:
 Before evaluating: determine if an expectation gap exists
 identify the expectations held by each major stakeholder group
 determine whether the stakeholders perceive the organization as
meeting those expectations
 search for gaps

30. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Figure 3.1 Expectation Gaps

31. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Threat assessment analysis - For reputation:
 Determine the likelihood and impact of an expectations gap:
examine the salience of the stakeholder involved
 stakeholder’s importance to the organization
 a function of power, legitimacy, and willingness

32. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Salience of the stakeholder:
 Power:
 ability of the stakeholder to get
the organization to do something
it would not do otherwise
 relates to the stakeholder’s
ability to disrupt organizational
operations
 stakeholders who control
essential resources or can form
coalitions have strong power
 enhanced by the ability to take
action against the organization

33. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Salience of the stakeholder:
 Legitimacy:
 refers to actions that are
considered desirable, proper, or
appropriate according to some
system
 a stakeholder concern is more
serious when it is deemed
legitimate by other stakeholders
 ignoring a legitimate concern
makes the organization appear
callous to other stakeholders
 crisis managers should
determine whether other
stakeholders will view the
concern as legitimate

34. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Salience of the stakeholder:
 Willingness:
 stakeholders’ desire to confront the organization about the problem
 a problem must be important for them, and their relationship to the
organization must be relatively weak

35. ORIENT: ANALYZE THE INFORMATION
Salience of the stakeholder:
 Translated into impact and likelihood:
 High power and legitimacy  a strong impact
 Legitimacy and willingness  strong likelihood of occurrence

36. DISCUSSION
1. How is social media changing crisis prevention efforts?
2. What recommendations would you make to a small
organization about how best to monitor the online environment?

37. CRISIS-SENSING MECHANISM
 Formed by the first three steps in crisis prevention
 A systematic means of collecting crisis risk information
 Built on 3 points:
 locating the source of crisis risk information
 funneling the information to a central location
 making sure the information is analyzed - converted into knowledge

38. CRISIS-SENSING MECHANISM
 Can be viewed as knowledge management
 a means of finding the knowledge an organization needs
 attempts to create a repository of warning sign knowledge by
locating, collating, and analyzing the crisis risk information or
existing crisis knowledge

39. DECIDE AND ACT:
TAKE PREVENTIVE ACTION
 Determine whether to take action
 Determine what actions to take on the serious threat:
 Monitoring: following the development of the warning signs
 Diffusing: actions create changes that eliminate or reduce the
likelihood of a warning sign becoming a crisis

40. EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE THREAT REDUCTION
 Evaluation monitors the threat to determine whether the action taken
to address it had any effect:
 reduce or eliminate the chance of a crisis
 produce no results
 may intensify the warning signs or risks, thereby moving an
organization closer to a crisis
 Never assume any change is for the better

41. EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE THREAT REDUCTION
 Monitoring: a regular review of any changes designed to reduce
warning signs
 The review determines:
 effectiveness of the changes
 whether any additional modifications are warranted

42. EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE THREAT REDUCTION
Evaluating issues management:
 depends on the goals of the issues management effort
 determining how close the final action taken on the issue was to
the desired outcome for the issue
 considering if there are still groups actively seeking to manage
the issue

43. EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE THREAT REDUCTION
Evaluating risk management (risk aversion):
 an ongoing concern
 conducting periodic reviews of the risk to determine the effectiveness
of the risk aversion program
 compare the level of risk before and after the risk aversion program
is implemented
 whether the program works over time
 asking the disgruntled stakeholders if the resolution was satisfactory

44. EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE THREAT REDUCTION
Success in closing an expectation gap:
 determined by whether stakeholders perceive the organization as
meeting expectations
 organization and stakeholders must co-create meaning: share a
similar interpretation of the organization’s performance on the
desired expectations
 evaluated by using surveys:
 assess stakeholder perceptions of expectation performance before
and after efforts are initiated to close the gap

45. PARACRISES: A REVIEW OF ACTION
AND EVALUATION
Challenge:
 occurs when stakeholders
publicly claim an organization is
acting in an irresponsible manner
 a common form of paracrisis
Image source: Huddersfield Greenpeace

46. PARACRISES: A REVIEW OF ACTION
AND EVALUATION
Confronted with a challenge paracrisis:
 should the organization address the challenge?
 how should the organization respond to the challenge?
 refusal
 refutation
 repression
 recognition/reception
 revision
 reform

47. PARACRISES: A REVIEW OF ACTION
AND EVALUATION
Confronted with a challenge paracrisis:
 Respond option selection depends on:
 how powerful/threatening the challengers appear
 the cost of the changes
 how consistent the change is with the organization's strategy

48. PARACRISES: A REVIEW OF ACTION
AND EVALUATION
Challengers provide a means of assessing the effectiveness of the
paracrisis response in reducing the threat:
 Challengers end the challenge
 the threat is reduced
 Challengers escalate the challenge and successfully recruit other
stakeholders to view the organization as irresponsible
 the threat reduction has failed

49. CONCLUSION
 A crisis prevention program: a valuable part of the crisis
management process.
 The single best way to avoid a crisis is to listen carefully to your
audiences and respond to threats before they get out of hand.
 Prevention is not as easy as it sounds.
 An organization cannot count on avoiding all crises. Hence, the
need remains for crisis preparation, which is the subject of
Chapters 4 and 5.

50. DISCUSSION
1. What barriers do you see to organizations taking preventative
measures? How might they be overcome?
2. What are some organizational barriers to creating a crisis-sensing
mechanism? How might you overcome those barriers?
3. Why is it useful to include impact evaluations for both
stakeholders and organizations?
4. Why could you consider paracrises both risks and opportunities?

51. NEXT CHAPTER
Chapter 4
CRISIS PREPARING: PART I