2. INTRODUCTION
Crisis management is a critical organizational function. Failure can result in
serious harm to stakeholders, losses for an organization, or end its very
existence. Public relations practitioners are an integral part of crisis
management teams. So a set of best practices and lessons gleaned from our
knowledge of crisis management would be a very useful resource for those in
public relations. Volumes have been written about crisis management by both
practitioners and researchers from many different disciplines making it a
challenge to synthesize what we know about crisis management and public
relations’ place in that knowledge base. The best place to start this effort is by
defining critical concepts
3. PHASES OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Crisis management can be divided into three phases:
pre-crisis
crisis response
post-crisis.
6. CRISIS OF KODAK CAMERA
Kodak is not the first company to face major threats to its success posed by
the ability of new technologies to disrupt markets.
It is certainly not the only company to have its profits damaged by missing the
boat on a new technology.
Partnership with smaller technology firms in the 1970s instead of keeping
digital camera production in-house would likely have enabled the corporation
to compete in the digital camera industry that exploded throughout the 1990s
and 2000s.
Kodak developed its own instant photography products but was sued by
Polaroid and ended up having to pay that company $909 million in 1990.
7. SOLUTION AND RISE IN CRISIS
MANAGEMENT
Kodak was responsible for the rise of amateur photography among American
consumers, and it took photography out of the professional portrait studio and
into everyday life. In 1900, they paid an additional 15 cents for film. In 1912, the
company released the Kodak Vest Pocket camera, which weighed 10.5 ounces,
measured one inch in width when fully compressed, and sold by the millions by
the time production stopped in 1926. It had achieved an incredible position over
the course of 70 years in an industry that was largely its own creation. The way
Kodak saw it, there was nothing more important to the company’s success than
protecting its interests in film photography.
8. CONCLUSION
crises are not the ideal way to improve an organization. But no organization is
immune from a crisis so all must do their best to prepare for one. This entry
provides a number of ideas that can be incorporated into an effective crisis
management program. At the end of this entry is an annotated bibliography. The
annotated bibliography provides short summaries of key writings in crisis
management highlighting. Each entry identifies the main topics found in that
entry and provides citations to help you locate those sources.
