Communication Strategies as a Basis for Crisis Management Including Use of the Internet as a Delivery Platform (original) (raw)

Eighty per cent of small companies without a comprehensive crisis plan vanish within two years of suffering a major disaster-a remarkable and ominous statistic. Crises are occurring more often in all organizations, and when they occur, they are leaving a wake of financial, operational, and reputational damage. Why this trend, now? There are five important reasons: 1) a more volatile workplace involving financial, legal, or management issues within the organization; 2) an extreme production mentality often obscuring the conditions under which crises might otherwise be recognized, addressed, or mitigated; 3) enhanced technological platforms for information delivery, such as the Internet, generating a revolving information door thus promoting organizational stress and crisis; 4) fast-paced and invasive journalism practices that eliminate invisibility for decisionmaking or reaction; and, 5) lack of strategic planning for crisis. There is an increasing body of evidence suggesting that crises in an organizational environment, whether created by act-of-God or manmade circumstances, have defined and predictable characteristics often relating to communication problems in the discourse community.

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