Crisis Communications Essay

Crisis communication is the most important aspect of external and internal organization communication. This type of communication ranges from image restoration campaigns to employee turnover. In the articles that I have analyzed, I discovered many examples of crisis communications and its importance. I will discuss the Bridgestone-Firestone Corporation's image restoration campaign and explain Benoit's theory of image restoration. Also, I will discuss how crisis communications fits into public relations models. Two examples for discussion will be how supervisors should convey bad-news to their employees, and group communication within employee turnover. My last example for this discussion will be Bill Clinton's image repair discourse.

Many organizations have experienced some form of public relations problem or crisis. The severity of these public relations problems can vary from very minor to very serious. A public relations problem can arise from a number of areas including leaked information about the practices of a company that could be damaging to their business or sales. In addition a public relation crisis could be dealing with a human resource problem or exposure of poor treatment of employees

The president of Big Blue University (BBU) designated the Office of Communication with responsibility for all information during a crisis and selected Mark Hughes, the Director of Communications, as the official spokesperson for BBU. Currently, BBU faces an active shooter scenario; however, before addressing this situation, the following represent existing risk management and mitigation pre-event measures:

The public relations at the White House are key segment for developing a dialogue not only between the public and government, but also internally. The segmentation program of the excellence theory would help crisis communicators to break down the large publics to smaller subpublics, which may include press, media, active publics, social media, the White House employees etc. The crisis communication team would then release accurate information about the breach to these segments in the form of press release, articles or newspapers (Fearn-Banks, 2011).

Luttrell, Regina. Public Relations Tactics. Dec2014, Vol. 21 Issue 12, p12-12. 3/4p. , Database: Corporate ResourceNet

Potential advantages and challenges associated with communicating within the organization and with the public and private sectors during this crisis situation.

The following is a rhetorical evaluation of the Public Relations tactics employed by Paul Frank Industries after the fall out of a media relations event that showcased Native American heritage in a way that was perceived as offensive to the Native American culture. Ethics should be at the heart of all PR programs and should lend itself to foster both trust and loyalty with an organizations stakeholders and publics. Frank Industries reacted calmly, employed best practices, and secured better relations with the Native American publics, however, the following will demonstrate where they missed it and how they can improve programs in the future.

During the twentieth century public relations operated with a ‘thin’ understanding of ethics, which caused complex problems for society. To understand why and how this happened we must first understand what ethics and public relations are and how they work together. Public relations is ‘the management of communication between an organization and its publics’ (Tench & Yeomans 2009, p. 5)); its role is to establish a positive relationship between an organisation (or individual) and society. Public relations has power – with that power comes a responsibility to be ethical, accurate and aware. Ethics is ‘the study of individual and collective moral awareness’ (Grassian 1992, p. 3); ethics allow people to identify what is ‘right and wrong, good and bad’ (Breit 2007, p. 309). Making ethical choices in public relations means to have honesty, loyalty, respect and integrity. Throughout this essay I will discuss why public relations has been perceived as unethical and examples of unethical communication; I will then

This paper was prepared during the Spring Semester of 2016 for COMM 226-003 - Introduction to Public Relations.

Effective crisis management is crucial in maintaining a healthy organizational culture and maintaining public trust. The way leaders proactively plan for and also respond to a crisis is subject to intense scrutiny by members of the organization and the outside public. Respond to the questions and the posts of at least 2 colleagues.

Public Relations in New Zealand is widely useful, practised and builds up an organisation’s relationships with its publics. PR in short, is essentially about communication and relationship building. PRINZ [Public Relations Institute of New Zealand] (2009) defines PR as “The deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” This essay will deconstruct and critically examine this definition of public relations in relation to PR theories. These theories being Systems Theory, Relationship Management and Excellence Theory will be examined and applied to campaign examples. This will give a comprehensive understanding of the theory’s meanings as well as relationships with aspects of the PRINZ definition of PR. To understand PR theories however, the term publics must first be addressed.

According to Lillibridge and Klukken (1978), crisis is an event or situation that cause " 地n upset in equilibrium at the failure of one's traditional problem-solving approach which results in disorganization, hopelessness, sadness, confusion, and panic" (62). In the face of crisis, there is an urgent need to swing to action and communication is the only vehicle that can convey this message to everyone concerned. When crisis occur, communication challenges becomes worsened because the

The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.

The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR

As the name of the discipline implies, public relations is how an organization builds beneficial relationships with its key stakeholders. With effective communication as the practices’ primary tool, modern day organizations have taken advantage of proficient practitioners to boost exposure of their company and its message across to international audiences.