Coombss Situational Crisis - Case Study Example

Crisis Management Insert Name Tutor Date Contents Introduction 3 Coombs’s Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) 4 News Corporation’s communications strategy in relation to the SCCT framework 5 News Corporation strategy compared to the SCCT model 8 Conclusion 9 Bibliography 10 Mail Online, 2012, We must look at our past mistakes: Rupert Murdoch reassures News Corp's 50,000 employees after report brands him 'unfit to run a company’. Retrieved on 27th October 2012 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2138478/Phone-hacking-scandal-Rupert-Murdoch-emails-50-000-News-Corp-staff-reassurances.html#ixzz2AUH0OssX 10 Introduction Crisis communication is defined as the dialogue between an organization and its publics before, during and after a negative occurrence concerning the organization (Fearn-Banks, 2002). It involves making strategic decisions which are characterized by their magnitude being big, time scale in that they set the direction that the organization will take after the crisis and they also require commitment because they involve making choices and using resources that cannot be easily reversed (Haberberg & Rieple, 2001). Poor crisis communication tarnishes the organization’s public relations and people may eventually lose trust in the organization. It is however important for organizations to have a crisis communication plans since they do not know when a crisis will happen. The key elements of a crisis communication plan include the crisis communication team, a response action plan, the key messages which should be communicated during a crisis and the communication channels to be used (Coombs, 1998). New Corporations phone hacking scandal is an example of failure in crisis communication that almost led to the closure of the organization. The organization was involved in illegal hacking of a phone that involved a murdered child. The corporation however came out and apologized for the scandal but actions of the public relations team that followed did everything else in the wrong way. Timothy Coombs however came up with the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) which gives a framework for organizations to apply crisis communication theories when dealing with a crisis. The framework is founded on attribution theory which asserts that people often look for causes of various events especially of the events were unexpected (Coombs & Holladay, 2004). Basically, they try to place the responsibility of that crisis somewhere else. Coombs’ framework therefore gives some guidelines on how to manage a crisis in the organization. In this paper, I will be comparing how New Corporations managed their crisis with the guidelines in the Coombs’ framework. Coombs’s Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) According to Coombs (1995), there are three crisis communication phases in the crisis communication strategies identified in the management of a crisis plan. The first phase is the pre-crisis where organization’s management should be involved in prevention of a crisis and preparation in case one happens. Prevention involves taking measures to reduce that risks of a crisis happening. Preparation on the other hand involves coming up with the crisis management plan, choosing and training the members of the crisis management team and testing the crisis management plan and the team members. The second phase is the during the crisis response phase where the management responds to a crisis that has happened. At this stage, the public relations team has the most critical role to play in designing the message that will be sent to the various publics. During the initial response, the public relations team must be quick, accurate and consistent. This is then followed by strategies for repairing damage which has been inflicted by the crisis on the reputation of the organization. These strategies include attacking the accuser, denying that there is a crisis, excuses, justification, compensation and apology among others (Coombs, 2007d). The last phase is the post crisis stage where the organization’s management looks for ways to improve their preparation for the next crisis and fulfill some of the commitments made while managing the crisis. The framework also gives various crisis response strategies that can be used by organizations. These are divided into primary crisis response strategies and secondary crisis response strategies. The primary ones are further divided into denying the crisis by attacking the accuser, totally denying the existence of the crisis or looking for a scapegoat. They can also be by diminish crisis response strategies such as giving excuses and justifications, and finally rebuild crisis response strategies such as compensation and apology. Secondary crisis response strategies are the bolstering crisis response strategies such as reminder to the stakeholders of the god work of the company, ingratiation and victimage where the manager informs the stakeholder that the organization is also a victim of the crisis. News Corporation’s communications strategy in relation to the SCCT framework News Corporation’s used the primary crisis response strategy which involved an apology and compensation. Rupert Murdoch who was the News Corporation boss came out to apologize to the public stating that organization will admit liability for the cases alleging breach of privacy and that it will compensate the claimants. According to Kellerman (2006), an apology indicates that the leader accepts responsibility for any offense. News Corporation’s boss also used the strategy of a scapegoat by alleging that his company has so many employees all over the world and that he was not aware of t he detailed actions which were done by the people he trusted. The organization also used justification, a diminishing crisis response strategy where the manager tries to minimize the perceived damage that occurs as a result of the crisis. This is seen where Murdoch defended the company by saying that the company had dealt with the controversy in the best way possible but making just minor mistakes. According to the Situational Crisis Communication Theory, the most dominant and frequently used crisis communication strategy was the attacking the accusers. This involves confronting any person claiming that something wrong has happened in the organization. After the crisis, News Corporation used its affiliate companies the Fox News and Wall Street Journal to try and defend the incident that had occurred. For example, the Wall Street Journal which was owned by Mr. Murdoch redirected the criticisms of the News Corporation to journalists who directed the coverage of that story. One of its editorials stated that “We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw” (Robinson, 2011). After the investigations to the scandal had been completed, the members of the parliament stated that Mr. Murdoch was not fit to run his media empire. In response to this, the News Corporation’s members of the board announced that they had full confidence in Mr. Murdoch’s fitness and that they supported him to remain at the top of the company (Mail Online, 2012). These were like retaliatory attacks against those who were attacking the leadership of Mr. Murdoch. Crisis communication in the company was also done in the during the crisis phase where the manager was looking for ways of repairing the damage to the company’s reputation that had been caused by the crisis. This is where Mr. Murdoch used strategies of attacking the accusers, justifying the crisis and also compensation and apology. According to the Situational Crisis Communication Theory, these are some of the means by which a company can try to repair its reputation during and after a crisis (Clardy, 2012). In responding to the questions arising from the scandal, the News Corporation’s most frequently used speaker was Mr. Rupert Murdoch who was the corporations chairman aged 80 years. He controlled the shareholding of the company and is the one who came out to defend the company and sending the apology. There was however varying messages among people who were interviewed and gave their views regarding the scandal. Mr. Murdoch in his statement he said that the company has over 50,000 employees around the world and so he was not aware of the detailed actions (Tenore, 2011). On the other hand, it was reported in The Guardian that more than 20 journalists who were employees of the News Corporation had reported that illegal activities which were done with the assistance of private investigators was a commonplace and it was well known to the company executives. This contradicted what Murdoch, who was among the said executives had stated. Another executive in the company, James Murdoch stated that the hacking was not done by more than one reporter and insisted that it was work of one reporter, Clive Goodman. Rebekah Brooks who was the chief executive of the company had also issued a statement that the company would be closed down due to the crisis. There was however varying strategies used by those who spoke concerning the scandal. Some were trying to justify the act by saying that hacking had been a commonplace in England, some were denying not being aware of the happenings while some admitted and apologized. The message strategies also varied over a time where during the crisis, most of them accepted the wrongdoing and apologized headed by Rupert Murdoch. However, after the apology, other strategies were employed such as finger pointing on the media for publishing the story. This was seen during the scandal when Fox News, a channel owned by the News Corporation started accusing the media who covered the news of the scandal. After the crisis, the company tried to downplay the crime where an editorial in the Wall Street Journal which is co-owned by News Corporation published that “It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous” (Wayne, 2011). This was a strategy of trying to downplay the scandal and make people view it as if it was a minor crime. In trying to justify the scandal, the Wall Street also stated that “Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a non celebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler” (Wayne, 2011). This was a strategy of trying to justify the crime and repair the damaged reputation by reminding the stakeholders of the good work that the company had done in the past. News Corporation strategy compared to the SCCT model News Corporation’s strategy in responding to the crisis differed at some point with the one recommended in the SCCT model. News Corporation’s chairman took the right move when he came out immediately and apologized. However, the responses that followed made it difficult for the company to easily recover from the crisis. According to the Situational Crisis Communication Theory, News Corporation ought to have prepared a crisis communication plan. However, since they did not have, they could have started up from during the crisis phase. In this phase, some of the actions that the company could have taken include: Identifying the crisis communication team where the company could have first identified a public relations team that will communicate to the public on what had happened and the steps that the corporation was taking. This team could have been charged with responding to any question arising from the public regarding the scandal. The other things would have been to develop the Response action Plan. This involves gathering all important facts relating to the crisis. This includes who was involved, when, why and how. The team must also try to determine the perceptions that the members of public have regarding the crisis. In the case of News Corporation, the members of the public perceived that it was a planned scandal and that the top executives were also involved (Sturges, 1994). Therefore the objectives of the team would have been to clear these perceptions and shed the light on the entire issues. Therefore when designing the key message, all these should have been considered. After the Chairman’s apology, the team could have also maintained proper communication with the members of the public as the company assesses what went wrong and taking actions to avoid such mistakes in the future and as they address the legal obligations that arose (Coombs & Holladay, 2002). This could have helped the company come out of the crisis successfully. Conclusion Since any organization can be faced with a crisis, it is important for the management to have a crisis management plan which will help in recovering from the crisis. The SCCT model gives a clear framework which if well followed, will ensure that an organization does not suffer for long from the impact of the crisis. This model could have helped the News Corporation come out of the scandal without the much criticism that was received from the public. Bibliography Tenore, M., 2011, Explainer: Your 5-minute guide to the News Corporation hacking scandal, Retrived on 27th October 2012 http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/139689/explainer-news-corp-phone-hacking-scandal/ Haberberg, A., & Rieple, A., 2001, The strategic management of organizations, Financial Times/Prentice Hall,New Jersey. Fearn-Banks, Kathleen. 2002. Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Mail Online, 2012, We must look at our past mistakes: Rupert Murdoch reassures News Corp's 50,000 employees after report brands him 'unfit to run a company’. Retrieved on 27th October 2012 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2138478/Phone-hacking-scandal-Rupert-Murdoch-emails-50-000-News-Corp-staff-reassurances.html#ixzz2AUH0OssX Wayne, R., 2011, News Corp Hacks Public Relations Efforts, Forbes, UK, Retrieved on 26th October 2012 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2011/07/26/news-corp-hacks-public-relations-efforts/ Clardy, A., 2012, Organizational Reputation: Issues in Conceptualization and Measurement, Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 15(4):285-303. Sturges, D., 1994, Communicating through crisis: A strategy for organizational survival, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 7, 297-316. Coombs W., & Holladay S., 2002, Helping crisis managers protect reputational assets: Initial tests of the situational crisis communication theory, Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 16, 165-186. Coombs W., 1995, Choosing the right words: The development of guidelines for the selection of the “appropriate” crisis response strategies. Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 8, 447-476. Kellerman B., 2006, When should a leader apologize and when not? Harvard Business Review, 84(4), 73-81. Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. 2004. Reasoned action in crisis communication: An attribution Theory-Based approach to crisis management. In Millar, D. P. & Heath, R. L. (Eds.), Responding to crisis: A rhetorical approach to crisis communication (pp. 95-115). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Coombs, W. T. 2007d. “Protecting Organization Reputations During a Crisis: The Development and Application of Situational Crisis Communication Theory”. Corporate Reputations Review, 10(3): 163-176. Coombs, W. T. 1998. “An Analytic Framework for Crisis Situations: Better Responses From a Better Understanding of the Situation”. Journal of Public Relations Research, 10(3): 177- 191. Robinson, J., 2011, "Phone hacking: NI to apologise to victims including Sienna Miller". The Guardian (UK), Retrieved on 28th October 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/08/news-corp-phone-hacking Read More