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How To Communicate With Stakeholders In Crisis Communication Case Study

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As stakeholders play such an important role in shaping an organization’s reputation, this study now turns to define what a stakeholder is and how to communicate with stakeholders in the case of crisis. Many communication scholars (e.g. Cooper, 2003; Dougherty, 1992; Gray, Owen, & Adams, 1996; Lerbinger, 1997) have asserted that stakeholders are a group of people, or public, that mutually influence an organization. Stakeholders are interested in particular organizations, and in turn, organizations are interested in them (Gray et al., 1996). Further, Lerbinger (1997) noted that stakeholders are people affected by an organization’s operations and decisions, who in turn, can affect an organization’s performance. Researchers have categorized …show more content…

Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) have noted that with change, previous corporate criteria, expectations and communication protocols followed with a group may turn out to be inappropriate or inconsistent, and need prompt review. Even with no change, demands from different stakeholder groups may vary greatly or even conflict. An organization must be aware of the current importance and relationship of each group to it to decide which groups to attend to and which groups to disregard (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).
Regarding using social media for crisis communication, the unstable business environment created by a crisis may blur the boundary between internal and external stakeholders (Lerbinger, 1997). These groups may both be affected by a crisis and become intertwined. However, as indicated in the previous section, this present study is concerned more with the external than internal stakeholders. The author believes that external stakeholders do not have much access to a company’s information, and that therefore they could have an even greater craving for information than their internal counterparts. The external stakeholders that this study looks at are the customers and general audience, and during crises, victims and their associates. Victims may be customers of an organization before a crisis happens, and they become victims once they are harmed or affected. Combined with Mitchell et al.’s (1997) categories, since the main driving force of a crisis is urgency,

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