Executive Summary When there is a crisis in an organization, communication is not just about sharing information; it becomes a tool to build trust, reduce fear, and provide reassurance to employees. During such situations, employees often feel uncertain, anxious, and confused, and they look towards the organization for clarity and support. This white paper explores the role of internal communication in handling organizational crises, with a strong focus on the human side of communication. The study highlights that employees are not just part of the workforce but individuals who experience emotional stress during crises. Therefore, organizations must move beyond formal communication and adopt a more empathetic and people-centered approach. By implementing internal communication strategies such as the buffer strategy, effective time management, and the use of communication technologies, organizations can deliver messages in a structured and sensitive manner. These strategies help in reducing panic, avoiding misunderstandings, and creating a sense of unity within the organization. When communication is timely, clear, and compassionate, employees feel valued and supported, which strengthens their trust in the organization. Overall, this paper emphasizes that crisis communication is not only about managing situations but also about managing people, their emotions, and maintaining trust during challenging times.

ABSTRACT In recent years, the promise of fact-based strategic communication has been steadily eroding. Whether in public health campaigns, political debates, or organizational crises, clear and accurate information often fails to persuade. The reason is not the absence of facts, but the collapse of shared realities in what many now call the post-truth era. In polarized societies, people interpret messages through partisan identities, question the motives of institutions, and respond more to emotional cues than to evidence. This article argues that to remain relevant, strategic communication must be reimagined. I introduce the Identity – Trust – Emotion (ITE) Framework, which places three forces at the center of communication: identity filters that shape how messages are received, trust anchors that shape whether messages are accepted as credible, and emotional resonance that drives persuasion. Rather than assuming rational publics, the ITE framework acknowledges fragmented audiences and contested truths. Drawing on examples from both established democracies and fragile states, I illustrate how this approach can guide governments, corporations, and humanitarian organizations in navigating fractured publics. By moving beyond the “fact-first” paradigm, the framework offers both a theoretical shift for communication scholarship and practical tools for communicators working in an age when facts alone are no longer enough.

Orientation: The fundamental recalibration of the psychological contract (PC) for women managers remains under-researched despite the recognised importance of flexible work and well-being. This study focuses on women managers in a South African essential service state-owned enterprise. Research purpose: This study aimed to gain insights into the PC of women managers during and post the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Motivation for the study: Radical changes impact PCs. This study explores how COVID-19 reshaped this contract for women managers in essential services, who faced unique compounded pressures in balancing leadership, and intensified domestic roles. Research approach/design and method: Using a qualitative approach and purposive sampling, data were collected from 16 participants through semi-structured interviews. Main findings: During the pandemic, participants expected clear communication, support, health measures, and flexible work, but instead faced employer demands for unwavering commitment and constant availability. Post-pandemic, they anticipated guided reintegration but perceived demands for an abrupt return to normalcy. Whilst some participants reported a breach of the PC, citing lack of care and appreciation, others expressed fulfilment regarding job security and flexible work adoption. Consistently, women managers emphasised expectations of equal treatment, professional development, and sensitivity to their unique gendered needs. Practical/managerial implications: The pandemic exposed a crisis of reciprocity, triggering a shift from relational to transactional contractual terms. Organisations must implement concrete interventions: formalising hybrid work, establishing gender-responsive crisis protocols, implementing recognition systems, mandating transparent communication frameworks, and conducting PC audits. Contribution/value-add: Organisational crises reshape the nature of the psychological contract while sustaining core expectations, with implications for long-term leadership engagement in essential services.

Previous research has extensively explored voluntary behavior; however, limited literature specifically addresses employees’ voluntary retweeting behavior in organizational crises. In this study, we sought to investigate employees’ voluntary retweeting behavior using the group engagement model, while exploring its antecedents of respect and prestige. Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of organizational identification and the moderating effects of local orientations and cosmopolitan orientations in these relationships. By collecting data from 321 employees across 13 organizations in China, our results indicate that during organizational crises, respect and prestige exert a direct and significant influence on employees’ organizational identification. Furthermore, organizational identification serves as a crucial mediating mechanism linking respect and prestige to employees’ voluntary retweeting behavior. Importantly, the effects of respect and prestige are contingent on employees’ orientations: the relationship between respect and organizational identification is stronger among employees with local orientations, while the relationship between prestige and organizational identification is more pronounced among employees with cosmopolitan orientations. These intriguing findings have theoretical and practical implications, providing valuable insights for both academic research and practical applications.

Purpose The 2025 “kiss cam” incident involving Astronomer Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andy Byron illustrates how personal indiscretions by strategic leaders can quickly become corporate crises. This study examines the likelihood of dismissal after a personal indiscretion of a strategic leader becomes public. Using situational crisis communication theory, we argue that the proximity of an indiscretion shapes attribution and board dismissal decisions and corporate social performance (CSP) moderates this relationship. Design/methodology/approach We test our hypotheses using a database of business news retrieved through Factiva, identifying 135 cases of personal indiscretions by strategic leaders in the US and Canada (2008–2019), complemented by a matched control sample of equal size. We assess the likelihood of leader dismissal and use logistic regression models to examine the hypothesized relationships and moderation effects. Findings Leaders are more likely to be dismissed after personal indiscretions, especially when the behavior is proximal to the firm or its stakeholders. CSP mitigates the effects of distal indiscretions but intensifies penalties for proximal ones. Research limitations/implications Our study has limitations that can be addressed by future research. First, our sample is restricted to the United States and Canada from 2008–2019 – a period shaped by specific cultural, historical and institutional norms. Future work could examine other countries or industries to assess how societal expectations of leader behavior and board responses vary across contexts. Second, because our analysis relies on secondary data and media coverage, it may reflect selection bias toward highly publicized cases. Surveys, interviews or experiments could complement this approach and capture less visible incidents or stakeholder perceptions more directly, as well as provide deeper insight into how boards justify their dismissal decisions. Third, although we focus on dismissal, we do not consider post-dismissal dynamics such as leader rehabilitation, reputational recovery or firm outcomes following replacement. Future studies could explore how boards communicate these decisions and how they affect stakeholder trust over time (Schepker and Barker, 2018). Fourth, we measure CSP using Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which, like any metric, has limitations. Future research could use alternative CSP measures to test the robustness of our findings and further examine CSP’s dual role as buffer and burden. Fifth, while we study personal indiscretions, other personal behaviors, such as affective states (Liu, Tian, and Zhang, 2023), also shape organizational outcomes, including tax planning and performance (Correa et al., 2025). Examining a broader set of personal behaviors would enrich our understanding of leader effects. Finally, although we propose a theoretical framework for a largely phenomenon-driven literature, future studies can use and refine this model to better identify the mechanisms underlying board responses to leaders’ personal misconduct. Practical implications Our study also offers practical implications. First, boards can use these findings to strengthen executive selection and oversight. Personal indiscretions, especially those proximal to the firm or involving key stakeholders, can rapidly escalate into organizational crises, making it essential for boards to establish clear, consistent procedures for evaluating such incidents. Second, firms with strong CSPs should recognize that social reputation can both protect and expose them: while moral capital may buffer minor controversies, it heightens stakeholder disappointment when serious indiscretions occur. Leaders therefore must maintain ethical consistency beyond the workplace, as personal conduct and corporate reputation are closely linked. Finally, although leadership turnover can harm short-term performance (Schepker et al., 2017), our results show that boards increasingly accept these costs to preserve legitimacy when personal misconduct threatens stakeholder trust. This underscores the growing importance of personal indiscretions in succession dynamics and highlights the need for behavioral and ethical criteria in succession planning and leadership evaluation. Originality/value The study extends SCCT to leaders’ personal misconduct, challenges the separate-affairs hypothesis and demonstrates how a firm’s social reputation can both protect and constrain its leaders.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explain the process of negative spillover effects of organizational crisis within the same industry. Previous research explains the spillover effects of organizational crises primarily through the lens of organizational similarity, yet it overlooks how similarity can lead to both positive and negative spillover effects, failing to account for a specific directional impact. Addressing this gap, the current research proposes systemic attribution as a driving factor of negative spillover and investigates its effects through two experiments, each conducted in integrity and capability crisis context. Additionally, drawing on two elements of attribution theory, consistency and consensus, this study examined the effects of prior crisis history of the crisis-stricken organization and crisis prevalence within the industry on systemic attribution and subsequent negative spillover. The findings indicate that systemic attribution indeed drives negative spillover effects. Furthermore, prior crisis history weakens spillover by lowering systemic attribution, whereas crisis prevalence strengthens spillover by enhancing systemic attribution. The findings were consistent across both integrity-related and capability-related crisis contexts.

This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding how organizational crises and public scandals in the welfare sector generate institutional trauma and reorganize collective memory among employees. Drawing upon the author's philosophical sociology, the analysis conceptualizes welfare institutions not as neutral bureaucracies, but as moral fields structured by symbolic hierarchies, socially sustained epistemic orders and historically sedimented categories of moral judgment. Institutional trauma is understood not as an aggregation of individual psychological injuries but as a socially mediated epistemic rupture – a breakdown in the taken-for-granted frameworks that make professional action intelligible and morally justified. The article proposes a multidimensional theoretical synthesis combining Durkheim’s account of collective representations and anomie, Mannheim’s conception of socially situated knowledge, Bourdieu’s field theory and Collins’s model of interaction ritual chains, supplemented by insights from the sociology of cultural trauma (Sztompka, 2000) and social memory studies (Halbwachs, 1992; Olick & Robbins, 1998). Conceptually, it argues that crises in welfare institutions disrupt three interwoven orders: (1) the moral order regulating expectations of care and responsibility, (2) the epistemic order that defines what counts as valid professional knowledge, and (3) the mnemonic order through which institutions remember and narrate their past. Empirically oriented illustrations are drawn from a purposively selected corpus of staff testimonies, internal documents, and public representations from documented crises in European welfare institutions. These materials are treated not as a representative sample but as analytically constructed narratives that illuminate recurring patterns of moral breakdown, epistemic disorientation, and reconstructive rituals of repair. The article concludes that institutional trauma is best understood as a collective condition in which moral, cognitive and mnemonic orders are simultaneously shaken, and that welfare institutions “heal” themselves – if at all – by reshaping their symbolic boundaries and mnemonic practices rather than simply by implementing new procedures.

This study presented the meaning and future tasks of the reorganization of the Ministry of Climate and Energy and Environment, which was newly established to respond to the global climate crisis carried out by the Lee Jae-myung administration. To this end, the government reorganization bill discussed at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea was reviewed, and the characteristics of government organizations to respond to the climate crisis in major countries and Korean government organizations were compared. Korea was similar to the government reorganization process in the UK and France. Germany has returned to the past due to changes in the policy environment after the government reorganization. Future tasks after the government reorganization to the Ministry of Climate Energy and Environment were discussed. Specifically, they include organizational design for the integration of climate and energy policies, a balance between responding to the climate crisis and maintaining and strengthening industrial competitiveness, and measures to resolve administrative inefficiencies such as conflicts within ministries.

Purpose While most organizations prepare for single crisis events (Coombs, 2004), facing consecutive, unresolved crises is not improbable. These scenarios, which we term “chrono” crises, can be considered a subtype of sticky crises – severe, recurring and complex (Jin et al., 2024). This study has three objectives: First, to develop the concept of “chrono” crisis, second, to understand how organizations have responded and what were some of the lessons learned so as to draw insights on how they can respond in the future, third, to propose a “Chrono” Crisis Readiness Protocol on how to manage it. Design/methodology/approach This multiple-case study examines organizations that experienced a new crisis before resolving an earlier one. Nine organizations or industries were purposively sampled for literal and theoretical replication. A total of 248 communication artifacts – media reports, organizational responses and financial data – spanning from 2007 to 2024 were analyzed using pattern matching and cross-case synthesis (Yin, 2014). Findings We first developed a definition for chronologically consecutive, unresolved crises or “chrono” crises. We found that mainstream media made unresolved crises salient through media hype and employed thematic frames when covering “chrono” crises. We also found that organizational responses to “chrono” crises remained uneven. The absence of a standardized response protocol for this type of crisis reflects a knowledge gap in managers assessing the culpability of their organizations, underscoring the need to evolve situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) frameworks for “chrono” crises. Research limitations/implications Drawing on the work on crisis readiness (Jin et al., 2024), this study proposes the “Chrono” Crisis Readiness Protocol to guide organizations on how to manage such crises. Limitations include reliance on documentary evidence and proxy measures (e.g. share price) for reputation. Future research could include interviews and experiments to test the protocol’s effectiveness. Practical implications The “Chrono” Crisis Readiness Protocol encourages fluid thinking and adaptive planning. It offers a structured yet adaptive approach to managing “chrono” crises. Its utility lies in two primary decision-making areas: (1) the allocation of organizational resources across overlapping crises and (2) the selection of an appropriate SCCT strategy for the latter crisis, considering the interaction between crisis clusters. Originality/value In coining and developing the concept of “chrono” crises, this study introduces a novel lens for understanding and managing consecutive, unresolved crisis events.

Since the 1970s, governments and organizations across the globe have achieved tremendous progress against sexual harassment (SH), especially in the workplace. However, the number of organizations suffering from this crisis has increased significantly over the past few years. Based on an overview of SH crises -that have received extra media coverage since 2014- this paper explores whether organizations managed to learn from these crises. Compared to other crises, SH scandals produce a higher magnitude of provocation within society. An individual’s act, based on their perception that the influence of power can be exchanged for sexual favors, destroys a business’s global reputation. Therefore, any research on this topic contributes to the further understanding and potential correction of this phenomenon. The current novelty is that it provides possible solutions to tackle the SH crises in the workplace by applying crisis management principles and adopting proactive behavior at a societal and organizational level.

The study is relevant due to systemic changes in Ukraine’s healthcare sector in the context of reforms, the coronavirus pandemic, and the full-scale war, which have affected the quality, accessibility, and governance of medical services. The study aimed to analyze the main trends in the qualitative transformation of medical services in Ukraine over the past five years, including managerial, financial, and organizational crises and challenges. The research methods were based on a narrative review with content analysis of 26 scientific publications and analytical reports from 2021 to 2025, as well as generalization of data on healthcare reform, financing, accessibility of medical care, public administration, digitalization, and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and war on the functioning of the healthcare system in Ukraine. The review indicates that the simultaneous implementation of reform and the presence of crisis factors contributed to disparities in the quality of medical services across different regions of Ukraine. Nevertheless, this increased transparency and efficiency in healthcare system management, but had an uncontrolled impact on quality depending on managerial capacity and allocated resources. Economic pressure and limited access to healthcare exacerbated regional inequalities. Digitalization (especially eHealth) certainly helped improve coordination and accounting of services, but could not independently significantly improve the quality of care. The coronavirus pandemic overloaded the system in the short term, while the full-scale invasion became a major long-term challenge for the quality of healthcare. These findings suggest that reforms, proper public governance, equitable resource distribution, and rational use of digital technologies should be integrated to improve the quality of medical services.

Ideological and Organizational Crisis of Nepali Communist Parties in the Context of the Post-2025 Gen Z Movement: A Critical Study

Anti-Imbalance Structural Management Theory: A Five-Layer Governance Framework for Organizational Stability

Ideological and Organizational Crisis of Nepali Communist Parties in the Context of the Post-2025 Gen Z Movement: A Critical Study

The social and economic reality shows that the impact of organizational crises is becoming increasingly significant, which highlights the need to examine how organizations manage such situations through the development and effective selection of strategies.This paper identifies several widely used theories that support the development and selection of crisis strategies in organizations and analyzes them, outlining the benefits and shortcomings of each.The theories discussed include Contingency Theory, Communication Theory, and Stakeholder Theory.By reviewing those approaches, the paper aims to offer a clearer understanding of the theoretical foundations that can guide organizational responses to crisis.

Organizational crisis communication on social media has become critical for reputation management, yet systematic empirical evidence remains limited. This study employs Natural Language Processing and machine learning to analyze 17,500 tweets from 50 major organizational crises across 14 industries. Using multi-model sentiment analysis (VADER, TextBlob), emotion detection (NRC Lexicon), and 14 machine learning algorithms, we investigate communication strategies, sentiment patterns, and predictive modeling of message effectiveness. Results reveal organizations predominantly employ information-focused strategies (61.7%), with a moderate sentiment gap between firm communications (TextBlob polarity: 0.164) and public responses (-0.002). Sentiment shows negligible correlation with total engagement (r = -0.000), though negative sentiment generates significantly higher engagement than positive sentiment (t = -2.148, p = 0.032). Machine learning achieves modest predictive accuracy (53.07%, Naive Bayes), demonstrating both potential and limitations of AI-assisted crisis management. This research contributes computational evidence to crisis communication theory, establishes methodological innovations for large-scale text analysis in IS research, and provides realistic assessments of data-driven crisis management capabilities.

Organizations have recently experienced increased risks due to political, technological, social, legislative, and environmental volatility. Accordingly, effective management should strive to enhance crisis prevention and preparedness activities that mitigate risks and strengthen organizational resilience and response capabilities. Modern crises challenge traditional crisis management preparedness approaches and decision making, ranging from modes of collaboration and application of emerging technologies to needs for real-time information sharing and ways of adequately addressing stakeholders. Hence, this research aims to assess the effectiveness and challenges of modern tool use and provide an overview of activities and approaches that organizations can employ in their modern crisis preparedness and resilience strengthening strategies. Secondary data from relevant scientific and professional sources was used. Findings indicate that a proactive communication approach, collaboration, innovation, and digital transformation shape the current effective crisis management. Research limitations include the application of secondary data and the extent of available, relevant literature. This research provides insights towards a more comprehensive understanding of crisis preparedness and crisis management literature, as well as provides benefits to organizations by highlighting key trends.

University institutions are being put to the test by crises, particularly when social media presents both positive and negative perspectives. This study examines the impact of leadership communication style on employees’ online communication behaviors and employee engagement at Jordanian institutions during times of crisis. This study develops an integrated framework that combines relational and situational perspectives to explain employee communication behavior. It is based on social exchange theory and situational crisis communication theory. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 426 academic and administrative employees from six Jordanian institutions to collect data, which was then analyzed using SmartPLS (SEM). Results show that a leader’s communication style improves employee engagement by promoting good social media behaviors while stifling those that are adverse, such as disseminating rumors and public complaints. It emerged that employee engagement becomes the primary mechanism by which leadership’s communication exerts an effect on employee digital voice during times of crisis. In addition to enhancing situational crisis communication theory by introducing employees as proactive digital ambassadors in organizational crisis planning, the research makes theoretical contributions by using social exchange theory to show how leader-employee exchanges in reciprocity are transformed into online behaviors.

Purpose Corporate social responsibility (CSR) might carry both risks and opportunities in an organizational crisis context, especially when the crisis is uniquely characterized by provoking moral outrage (i.e. scansis). The purpose of this paper is to explore how CSR might be leveraged as a scansis response strategy. Design/methodology/approach An online experiment was conducted (N = 461) to compare the effects of the standard corrective action against CSR-based strategies on reputational outcomes, with additional insights drawn from two underlying mechanisms, respectively negative moral emotion and skepticism. Findings The study found that compared to the standalone corrective action or the hybrid strategies combining CSR-based response and corrective action, people considered the scansis-stricken company employing a CSR-based strategy unrelated to the scansis the least acceptable, with higher reputational loss. In addition, both negative moral emotion and skepticism were found to mediate how people evaluated CSR-based scansis communication, with skepticism being the more salient mechanism. Originality/value The current study explored the relatively new and complex type of crisis that involves moral judgment and outrage (scansis). The findings altogether advanced research and practice on the role of CSR in crisis communication from the distinctive perspective of scansis.

Cyber incidents have evolved from isolated technical breaches into complex organizational crises that demand resilient, adaptive leadership. This paper reconceptualizes cybersecurity leadership as a specialized extension of crisis leadership, grounded in interdisciplinary theory spanning crisis management, digital transformation, high reliability organizing, and cyber resilience. It introduces two integrated models—the Cyber Crisis Lifecycle and the Cyber Leadership Hexagon—to articulate leadership roles across the incident continuum and define six core competencies: technical literacy, ethical judgment, digital sensemaking, stakeholder coordination, agility under threat, and resilience orientation. These models provide a comprehensive framework for understanding cyber leadership in environments marked by persistent ambiguity, socio-technical complexity, and adversarial threat. This theoretical expansion contributes to the emerging literature on digital-era leadership and lays a foundation for future empirical validation and cross-cultural application.