CRISES AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION

A crisis can be qualified as an unforeseen adverse event that requires immediate action by the organization and can harm a company's reputation by undermining its emergency procedures during an unforeseen outbreak. Leaders within a company must understand crisis responsibility and anticipate the possible attributions of the public. An effective response to the crisis depends on assessing the situation and the associated reputational threat. There are three types of crisis:

Victim Crises: Minimal Crisis Responsibility. Minor reputational threat

1. Natural disasters : acts of nature such as floods, tornadoes, earthquake.
2. Rumors: false and damaging information being circulated about your organization
3. Workplace violence: attack by former or current employee on current employees on-site.
4. Product Tampering/Malevolence: external agent causes damage to the organization.

Accident Crises: Low Crisis Responsibility. Medium reputational threat

1. Challenges: stakeholders claim that the organization is operating in an inappropriate manner.
2. Technical error accidents: equipment or technology failure that cause an industrial accident
3. Technical error product harm: equipment or technology failure that cause a product to be defective or potentially harmful.

Preventable Crises: Strong Crisis Responsibility

1. Human-error accidents: industrial accident caused by human error.
2. Human-error product harm: product is defective or potentially harmful because of human error.
3. Organizational misdeed: management actions that put stakeholders at risk and/or violate the law.

The immediate crisis response strategy consists of three clusters.

1. The first is the deny cluster, where the organization rejects responsibility and denies any connection between the crisis and the organization or blames another organization or person for the crisis.
2. The second group is the diminish cluster in which an organization attempts to decrease its responsibility for the crisis or the resulting damages.
3. The third group is referred to as the rebuild cluster, in which they admit responsibility and offer compensation or apologies to the victims and stakeholders involved in the crisis. This strategy attempts to offset the negative attribution with corrective action. The secondary crisis response strategy supports the three primary strategies to diminish the adverse effects and correct accusations and misleading information. The secondary crisis response strategy consists of reminder strategy (e.g., remind the stakeholders about the company's past good work), ingratiation strategy (e.g., praise stakeholders on their good deeds), and victimage strategy (e.g., remind stakeholders that the organization is a victim of the crisis. Finally, its prior reputation and crisis history may positively or negatively affect a reputational threat.

A company's crisis history consists of the crisis management strategies utilized by it.

Crisis management includes three different phases:

Pre-crisis, crisis response, and post-crisis, comprising different activities: Preventing crises, responding to them, and gaining knowledge from past crises.

Thus, when an organization experiences a crisis, it should be mindful of the crisis type and its crisis history while formulating an appropriate crisis response strategy.