Management briefing based on attached

Prepare a management briefing that explains the attached article’s key issue or challenge as it is likely to develop over the next three to five years. Use research resources (find at least two credible sources) that assert or deny the points being made by the author. Incorporate the additional authors’ opinions into your analysis.

The paper must be written in conformance with the citation formatting requirements of APA style, and all sources, whether directly quoted or paraphrased, must be cited in the text of your assignment as well as included on a References page.

Abstract
Crisis Communications
Management 2.0: Organizational
Principles to Manage Crisis in an
Online World.1
Alfonso Gonzalez-Herrero
Suzanne Smith
Alfonso Gonzalez-Herrero is
Director of External
Communications at IBM for Spain,
Portugal, Greece, and Israel. He is
also a professor in the
Communications Department of the
Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid,
Spain). Previously, GonzalezHerrero worked as a manager and consultant of BursonMarsteller and the New York office of Hill & Knowlton,
two of the world’s leading communications firms.
Contact Information
González-Herrero, Alfonso, PhD
IBM Spain and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Ginzo de Limia, 53, 5-D
28034 Madrid, (Spain)
Tel: +34 629073230
E-mail: agonzalezherrero@yahoo.com
1The views and opinions expressed in this article are
the authors’ own and don’t necessarily represent their
companies’ positions, strategies or opinions.
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The Internet has revolutionised crisis communications management. It is the channel through
which traditional crises have found new ways to
spread virally; it has brought new potential scenarios to plan for, and new forms of power configuration in the communication model, among
other changes.
This article examines how the Internet has introduced significant shifts in the way organizations
must monitor, plan and respond to crisis situations, while the basic objetives and principles of
crisis management remain the same. It also points
out the reasons why online crisis management
requires a new organizational culture and tone.
Introduction
The World Wide Web was born at the end of 1990,
allowing users to have information available
online with a point-and-click interface1. 20 years
later, the Internet has become a phenomenon with
an impressive and unstoppable social impact.
Today about 26% of the World’s population –or
more than 1.7 billion people– have Internet
access(Internet World Stats, 2009), which represents 380% more than in year 2000. Regions like
North America and Europe are well above those
figures, with 74% and 52% of the population having online access respectively.
The exponential raise of the Internet is even more
impressive if we consider, for example, that in
1999 only 23 ‘web logs’ –or blogs—existed (Blood,
2000) versus the millions of today; that a social
network like Facebook (set up in 2003) has in only
seven reached more than 300 million active users
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Suzanne Smith is EMEA Senior
Consultant at Text 100, Madrid based.
She has over 14 years of international
communications consultancy experience. Suzanne Smith is the founder of
Text 100’s Madrid office, which she ran
successfully for eight years, building
the business into one of the most
respected agencies in Spain. In her
current role of EMEA Senior
Consultant, Suzanne advises a range of Text 100’s
European clients on their PR and communications programs.
Contact Information
Smith, Suzanne
Senior Consultant, Text 100 EMEA,
Plaza de Colón, 2, Torre 1 – Planta 17
28046 Madrid (Spain)
Tel: +34 629 522435
E-mail: suzanne.smith@text100.es
worldwide (Facebook, 2009); or that a video sharing platform like YouTube (created in 2005) has
more than 100 million US viewers (YouTube,
2009) and serves more than one billion videos
worldwide daily (Wikipedia, 2009). These numbers cannot be ignored by communications professionals.
Organizational communication and online
crisis management
In our hectic world, news literally jumps
–through PC screens, mobile devices, or digital
TV sets– from one spot of the World to another in
a matter of seconds. The Internet has become the
preferred platform of information and communication for many customers, investors, analysts,
employees, the media, and the many other stakeholders any company has, transforming the practice of organizational communications as a whole.
Organizational crises have found today new ways
to spread. Like viruses, they now mutate, acquiring new and dangerous forms in, for example,
social forums like Facebook, or video distribution
sites such as Youtube. And, while communications professionals feel confident about how to
prevent and treat crisis in the ‘real’ world, many
of them are simply bewildered when faced with
the implications of such crises in the ‘virtual’ side
of business.
Literature review
The impact of the Internet on organizational communication has been a topic of great attention in
the last years. Kent, Taylor and White (2003) and
Settles (1996), for example, have studied the organizational responsiveness to stakeholders. Others
have tried to establish leading edge use of such
technologies (González-Herrero, Ruiz de
Valbuena, & Ruiz San Román, 2005; Ha and Pratt,
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Organization Development Journal
2000; Taylor, Kent & White, 2001), or to analyze
and predict future trends in specific geographic
environment or countries (Ayish, 2005; Naudè,
Froneman & Atwood, 2004).
Various authors have also covered from different
angles how some Internet technologies have had
an impact on current communication professional practices and how practitioners can use technology strategically (Gonzalez-Herrero and
Smith, 2008; Jefferson, 2006; Neil, 2000; Perry,
Taylor & Doerfel, 2003). Others have analysed
how the use of digital technologies has facilitated
the emergence of new tactics and tools in crisis
communications, such as the use of web sites,
interactive chats, real-time video, or audio files
(Hearit, 1999; Madere, 2006; Taylor and Perry,
2005; Witmer, 2000; Van Vark, 2004; West, 2003).
None of these previous articles have provided,
however, a global view of how the basic elements
of public relations program planning and crisis
management have been substantially altered since
the explosion of the Internet.
The purpose of this article is, therefore, to analyze
in a simple but meticulous way the degree of
change required for professional communicators
and organizations to adapt their crisis communications plans to the new, Internet-based, environment. We will do this by examining the seven
basic elements of any organizational communications plan: situation analysis, objectives, audience,
strategy, tactics, timing and budget.
Basic elements of a communications plan
Situation Analysis
For the crisis manager, the Internet has introduced relevant changes, since:
a) Organizations are still confronted with the
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same crises scenarios they had decades ago,
before the Web was born. In these ‘traditional’
scenarios, the Internet acts as a catalyst, accelerating the crises news cycle, and giving them a new
and viral dimension. Nevertheless, the Internet is,
substantially, just an additional channel for discussion of events that already occur in the real
world, although the same crises would most probably occur at a slower pace without the existence
of the Internet. KFC’s rats incident at a New York
franchise is an example of this2.
b) Organizations are now confronted with new
crises scenarios as well, which exist thanks to the
existence of the Internet. This would be the case
of crisis set off by spoof sites, rumours, hacking,
shadow or copy-cat web sites, web security
breaks, and all forms of cyber-terrorism. Without
the web there would be no such crises.
Recent episodes, such as the United Breaks
Guitars case -among many others which began
on the Web – can be more than just an annoyance
and could pose serious problems to companies
since they can reach audiences of hundreds of
thousands of people worldwide.
The former panorama has made crisis communications management a very complex discipline,
since (a) any organization is facing today many
more potential crisis scenarios than ever before (a
fact that has clear implications for issues management, crisis planning, and resource assignment,
among others); and (b) crises situations spread
today in a viral way, breaking geographical and
time barriers in a matter of seconds.
Objectives
The basic objective of crisis communications management remains the same: to avoid or, at least, to
minimize any negative impact of a given issue on
99
the organizational reputation and business objectives.
To accomplish this, organizations must follow the
same model as they did years ago: monitor for
potentially problematic issues, plan in advance,
and respond quickly to avoid or limit the negative
impact.
However, the way to achieve these objectives
today is far more challenging than it was a few
years ago.
Target Audience
Up to a decade ago, organizations addressed their
audiences through mass media such as TV, radio,
newspapers and magazines. It was the media who
determined whether the information it received
was newsworthy and credible and, if it was published, the audience had little opportunity to
respond. This has been called the ‘one-to-many’
model of communication (Gonzalez-Herrero and
Smith, 2008).
The Internet, however, has changed that model of
communication and today group discussion and
multiple individual online conversations have
replaced the former model (in a ‘many-to-many’
model). Mainstream media still have an important
voice in that discussion, but they do not dominate
the discussion to the extent they used to.
Therefore, under this new environment, organizations must realize that:
a) Audiences now have instant access to
information.
b) Stakeholders are now highly fragmented
due to the huge choice of media available
online.
c) Thanks to the new social platforms, ‘active’
individuals about an issue can find each
Consumer oriented
B2B
Relevance of Online communication Strategies
Figure 1. Relevance of online communication tools by the type of organization (consumer-oriented vs.
business-to-business).
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Organization Development Journal
other –and mobilize against organizational
interests– very easily. Publics have,
therefore, much more power today than
ever before, through the aggregation of
individual’s opinions.
d) The gatekeeper function of the traditional
mass media has disappeared in the online
world. Sources of negative information
about an organization are no longer
filtered
Faced with these fragmented, empowered audiences, it is clear that early identification of issues
and a quick, clear, honest response is essential to
prevent issues from becoming crises and facts
from getting distorted by rumours. A timely
analysis of web-based content might provide the
early warning needed to develop appropriate corporate plans and responses and enable companies
to avoid a crisis situation.
Finally, when trying to balance the relevance of
the web in any crisis plan versus traditional mass
media, organizations must also look at the type of
audience the company’s products or services are
aimed at. A manufacturer of professional building equipment is unlikely to have as net savvy an
audience as a gaming software company. Figure 1
illustrates this fact. The relevance of online communication strategies increases as the products of
the company are more oriented to a consumer
market (and, therefore, the company is subject to
a closer public scrutiny and greater stakeholder’s
power), versus the case of business-to-business
organizations that usually still enjoy a milder
environment with fewer constituencies and less
public interest.
Strategic approach
The fact that organizations need to cope with a
larger number of potentially problematic situa-
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tions that can spread at a much faster speed,
implies certain changes in the strategic approach
to the issues-management, planning, response
and recovery stages of a crisis cycle:
a) Issues management: The environment in
which crises occur today is increasingly virtual,
since many individuals use online communications to foster their campaigns against corporations. Therefore, vigilant monitoring is needed to
identify, track, and manage potentially conflicting
issues by influencing their course. Internet
resources can be useful when looking for emerging issues and problems, and can help corporations to adjust policies and actions before a crisis
occurs.
b) Planning-Prevention: Crisis managers will
have now to reflect in their crisis plans (and simulations) the new, ‘Internet-born’, scenarios and
will have to define strategies to act under those
circumstances. But also, they will have to develop
an Internet-plan for the more ‘traditional’ crisis
scenarios considered in the company’s crisis plan.
c) The Crisis: The Internet has brought down the
geographic and time barriers existing before. Any
crisis situation can become a global issue in a matter of seconds and, therefore, the type and speed
of response expected today have dramatically
changed, as have done the tools available to
respond.
d) The Post-Crisis: The Internet has also introduced new considerations about the long lasting
effects of a crisis. Today, companies should accept
that it is almost impossible to eradicate negative
publicity from the Internet, even when a crisis is
over. The web perpetuates bad news. It is no
longer the one day story it used to be in traditional mass media. For example, video sharing web
sites perpetuate stories like the one of United
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Airlines that can be viewed again and again.
Tactics
Nowadays any organization has many more communication tools than ever before to foresee, prevent, or act in a crisis situation.
For example, the Internet has opened up new
opportunities and ways of dealing with crises.
Two-way interactive communication through
social media platforms, the use of digital video
and audio files are examples of new tactics that
can be used.
And whilst a crisis can’t be hidden, a company
can limit damage by using Search Engine
Optimization to ensure that its official site
appears first when people do a search using
Google or another popular search engine. This
ensures that potential customers or partners, looking for information on an organization, see the
positive content generated by the company first.
This implies the need for up-to-date technical
education of the organization’s communication
executives.
Timing
The speed of response expected today from an
organization has dramatically changed. The organization’s reaction must be extremely fast if it
doesn’t want to lose control of the information to
some other source or be perceived as an informatively obscure company. Crisis management is no
longer the ’24 hour’ news-cycle discipline it was a
couple of decades ago.
If an organization’s audience use micro blogging
tools such as Twitter, they will expect brief (140
characters) updates at least twice a day rather
102
than one big announcement. Users of social media
also expect a dialogue around issues so all social
media channels need to be monitored carefully
and any questions or comments need a prompt
response. Because of the time required to do this
efficiently, it is vital for organizations to create a
clear social media policy well before any crisis
develops. A good policy gives engaged employees the freedom to participate in online conversations and provide an authentic source of information from within an organization.
Budget
Crisis managers must consider not only the
money and people required to design an Internet
plan should a crisis occur, but also the resources
that would be needed –and their availability- to
implement such a plan. This must include the
response through web-based resources, as well as
follow-up responses through social media platforms and forums. Otherwise, companies are in
danger of carrying out a nice –but naïve- intellectual exercise.
The need for a new organizational culture:
Internet is shaking some of the pillars of the existing culture in organizations. Currently, stakeholders demand a new relationship with the organization, a new tone and attitude from corporations
that need to adapt themselves should they want
to be successful in today’s crisis management.
Organizations must ask themselves several questions:
Has the organization engaged online influencers
properly?
Organizations must interact with their audiences
well before any crisis arises. This is not a new
principle in crisis management. What is new and
requires a cultural shift for many organizations is
that the engagement is now public.
Organization Development Journal
For example, corporations must engage influential
bloggers by responding to their postings via
external corporate blogs on a range of topics or by
participating in online forums or social platforms.
This is a task that peer-based organizations such
as some NGOs can accomplish more easily, since
their organizational cultures tend to be much
more participative and less hierarchical.
As a first step, companies often launch an internal
blog first and encourage their employees to do the
same. Other peer to peer platforms can be used
internally. It all prepares the organization to have
a credible presence in the cyber-space, to acquire
online experience, and to build a network of
Internte-based advocates.
Equally, in the case of consumer-oriented corporations, not only employees can play a supporting
and mitigating role in the cyber-space. Also product fans may play that influential role if properly
mobilized by the organization. Cite some
Facebook fan sites, where fans defend corporations. Although, organizations must be aware
that fans could also become ‘friendly-fire’ if they
feel deceived or betrayed by their brand.
Who must speak on behalf of the organization
online?
The pyramidal and hierarchical structure –where
only those designed by the organization, such us
the official spokespeople or the communication
department, can represent the company– has got
to come to an end. Today, people want organizations to take part in a conversation as human
beings with names, points of views and an ability
to listen.
This is why, in a world that values bi-directional
communication, corporations and governmental
organizations need to adopt a new attitude and
open their cultures to allow employees communicate online using the available social computing
technologies. Not necessarily so that they represent the official voice of the organization, but
empowering them to transmit a similar voice than
the one of the organization with bloggers, in
online forums, etc.
Employees may have the ability to turn around
negative opinions expressed about a company if
they feel free to belong and participate in social
media communities. They can build relationships,
respond to the concerns of the community and
mitigate the impact of crises.
Are members of the crisis team familiar with the
online world?
Managers and members of the crisis management
team must be acquainted with using Internetbased technologies and understanding the social
dynamics of the online world that require greater
openness and a more human voice.
For companies used to one way communication, a
‘many to many’ dialogue may seem a huge step
forward, but building open and honest relationships with key influencers establishes a company’s credibility and may help prevent crises or at
least minimize the damage they can do.
Conclusion
Online crisis management is not as simple as
designing a nice online newsroom and sending
Tweets to journalists instead of emails. It is far
more complex and it involves an important
change of mentality both in communicators and
their management, since some of the decisions
that need to be made affect the core of traditional
corporate cultures.
The rapid development of the Internet and its
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new forms of communication such as social platforms, blogs, online communities, etc. has
brought more potential scenarios to plan for, viral
spreading, new forms of power configuration,
and more channels of communication to pay
attention to, among other changes. These may
represent threats to crisis managers if not handled
appropriately.
The task is not easy. The good news for organizations, however, is that it is a feasible task. Firstly,
the basics of crisis management remain the same:
yesterday’s principles of monitoring issues, preventive and advance planning, and quick, credible crisis response are still valid in the 21st century. Second, many of the very same tools that spark
online crises are the ones that will help organizations to successfully confront the new panorama.
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Endnotes
1 In December 1990, the English physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau, while both
were working at CERN in Geneva (Switzerland), released a project using “HyperText […] to link and access information of various
kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will” (Berners-Lee and Cailliau, 1990). This network of links was called
the World Wide Web.
2 In February 2007, television cameras captured a swarm of rats scurrying about in a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant in New York City.
Images were widely broadcast on TV and rapidly could be found on the Web.
3 In the spring of 2008, the Canadian duo Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour when they witnessed
how one of their $3,500 Taylor guitars was being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago, discovering later that
had been severely damaged. Dave Carroll, the band’s singer, spent almost a year trying to get compensation from the airline. After
United conclusively said it would not pay, Carroll did what he had promised the airline: he wrote an online music video devoted
to his customer experience and posted it on YouTube. The song became an overnight sensation and generated more than 1.5 million YouTube hits in just three days (Garfield, 2009) and more than 6 million up to date.
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