Issues Management and Strategic Planning PRL2001 Crisis Management

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Issues Management and Strategic Planning PRL2001
Crisis Management

• Course Examiner - Elizabeth Dougall
• Lecture 9, Week 9
• Semester 2, 2002

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Objectives

• On completing the lectures, tutorials and
  readings for this week you should be able to
• Describe Crisis Management
• Explain the relationship between Crisis and
  Issues Management

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Confronting a Crisis

• Learning Resources.
• Heath, Chapter 9.
• Selected Readings.
• 7.1 Barton, L. 1991, 'When managers find
  themselves on the defensive', Business Forum ,
  Winter, pp. 8-13.
• Revisit Selected Reading 5.2 to refresh your
  understanding of the key issues raised.

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Issues Management Is . . .

• Identifying stakeholders.
• Monitoring their opinions and perceptions.
• Understanding the organisation's internal and
  external environments.
• Monitoring the progressive effect of those
  opinions and perceptions on public policy.
• Monitoring broader trends within the
  organisation's external environments.
• Identifying potential issues (ie. the gaps
  between stakeholders' expectations and the
  reality).

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Issues Management is . . .

• Monitoring and analysing potential issues to
  evaluate their potential impacts.
• Integrating with the organisation's strategic
  planning process.
• Modifying the organisations behaviour/ Changing
  corporate policy.
• Two-way communication with stakeholders to build
  relationships.
• Working to match perceptions to reality.

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What Is Crisis Management?

• Heath quotes Fink (1986) defining a crisis as
• an unstable time or state of affairs in which a
  decisive change is impending - either one with
  the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable
  outcome or one with the distinct possibility of a
  highly desirable and extremely positive outcome.

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What Is Crisis Management?

• Heath goes on to quote Weick (1988)
• Crises are characterized by low probability of
  high consequence events that threaten the most
  fundamental goal of an organization.

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What Is Crisis Management?

• Like issues management, crisis management is not
  simply a communication function that is enacted
  in the face of a particular set of circumstances.
  It involves
• the analysis of the risks to which an
  organisation is exposed
• negation of those risks where possible through
  organisation-wide strategic planning and.
• implementing communication plans interlocking
  logistical, incident response plans (ie. the
  plans that dictate how an organisation will react
  to the physical dimensions of a crisis incident).

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Crisis - Issues Management

• Heath states
• '... crisis management is an issues management
  function that entails issues monitoring,
  strategic planning, and getting the house in
  order, to try to avoid events that trigger
  outrage and uncertainty and have the potential of
  maturing into public policy issues. If all of
  these management pieces are in place, then crisis
  communication - especially media relations - is
  easier to manage.

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Crisis - Issues Management

• A situation may begin its life as an issue and
  develop into a crisis situation
• Barton (1991), describes how the AIDS issue
  became a crisis for New England Telephone when an
  HIV positive worker was harassed by co-workers
  and protests and boycotts from angry activists
  resulted.

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Crisis - Issues Management

• Similarly, a crisis can lead to an issue
• In 1999, two of Australia's leading radio
  commentators, John Laws and Alan Jones were
  accused of giving favourable endorsements and
  "editorial coverage" to organisations in exchange
  for large, regular payments directly to the
  announcers themselves. This situation became
  known as the "cash for comment" story.

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Crisis Management involves

• Analysing the risks to which an organisation is
  exposed.
• Prioritising those risks according to likelihood
  and severity of impact.
• Categorising major risks.
• Analysing the formal and informal communication
  and incident response systems an organisation has
  in place.

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Crisis Management involves

• Negating risk where possible.
• Putting plans in place to safeguard important
  relationships.
• Responding to reputation-threatening incidents or
  accidents by
• - implementing a responsible strategic response
  on the part of the organisation
• - communicating quickly and honestly with key
  internal and external stakeholders in a way which
  manages the messages they receive in relation to
  the incident.

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The Need for Clear Communication

• As outlined by Stickels (1994)
• no business, large or small, can afford to
  think that if a crisis does arise it is no one
  else's business. Shareholders, clients and
  employees will all want to know what has happened
  and how their company is dealing with a problem.

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Stakeholder Communication

• Communication be quick, honest and ongoing
• Stakeholders to communicate with include
• Staff
• Any staff, contractors, customers or neighbours
  who have been injured (in a situation where an
  accident triggers a crisis situation)
• The families of those injured or killed
• Board members
• All three levels of government (elected
  representatives and bureaucrats)

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Stakeholder Communication

• Neighbours
• Business associations/industry bodies
• Customers/clients
• Suppliers
• Investors/shareholders
• The Australian Stock Exchange (if the
  organisation involved is a listed company)
• Emergency services and their media units

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Stakeholder Communication

• Special interest groups
• Health agencies and experts
• Local community
• Media
• Competitors and.
• Industry commentators.

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Corporate Responsibility

• Critical for an organisation to be constantly
  depositing 'corporate credit points'.
• An organisation that is perceived by its
  stakeholders as being responsible, ethical and
  contributing to its community will be better
  positioned during a crisis.

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Corporate Responsibility

• In November 1999, for instance, an accident
  killed four mine workers at the Northparkes mine
  near Parkes in New South Wales.
• Media coverage immediately after the accident
  portrayed the company as one of Australia's most
  modern mining organisations, with safety
  practices among the best in the nation's mining
  industry. Company spokespeople for parent
  company, North Limited were portrayed as
  compassionate towards their workers and the
  families of those killed. The accident was
  regularly referred to in media coverage as 'rare'
  and the company was quoted as saying the accident
  would be investigated 'fully and openly to ensure
  this doesn't happen again.'

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Crisis Management

• Depending on the 'news worthiness' of the
  situation, a story can quickly achieve state,
  national or even international prominence.
• Just like the communication elements of issues
  management, crisis communication is not only
  about communicating with the media and
  controlling the messages which feature within
  that medium.

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Crisis Management

• It is about establishing and maintaining mutually
  beneficial relationships with all of an
  organisation's important stakeholder groups, both
  in anticipation of a crisis and when the
  organisation does face a reputation-threatening
  situation.

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Over the Recess

• Assignment 2 ORAL and PAPER
• ORALs start Week 13
• Rowland Qld want 10 PR/Journalism students to be
  part of a media throng for a mock crisis.
• Take care!

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