Corporate Crisis and the Long View

Abstract

The public primarily encounters the corporate communications function during a crisis. General rules are a good starting place for dealing with a crisis and handy to know, but a historical perspective is a critical supplement. Understanding the kind of crisis your organization faces (or is attempting to avoid) and managing that crisis successfully to the extent possible involves precedents encompassing connections among corporate identity and culture, brand, reputation, business model, and business type, as well as the changing nature of media and crises themselves. Excerpt UVA-BC-0246 Mar. 1, 2013 CORPORATE CRISIS AND THE LONG VIEW For most organizations, every crisis has an established set of procedures. When a commercial jet crashes, the thinking goes, an airline can do little but comfort families, for example, because government agencies take over investigations and make public announcements. Yet few airlines manage to get it right—unless the airline is lucky enough to have a pilot land in the Hudson River, and even that has to be managed carefully. The public primarily encounters the corporate communications function during a crisis. General rules are a good starting place for dealing with a crisis and handy to know, but a historical perspective is a critical supplement. Understanding the kind of crisis your organization faces or is attempting to avoid—indeed, managing a crisis successfully to the extent possible—involves precedents encompassing connections among corporate identity and culture, brand, reputation, business model, and business type, as well as the changing nature of media and crises themselves. Is the Medium the Mess? . . .