The crisis communication preparedness of nonprofit organizations: The case of German interest groups

A national survey of German interest groups showed that these nonprofit organizations are substantially lacking crisis preparations. Less than one third use crisis plans, crisis management teams, or crisis scenarios. In terms of web-based crisis communication, nonprofit organizations primarily relied on traditional forms of online communication for crisis response. Organizational experience with crises, the general status of the public relations function, as well as the crisis communication expertise of practitioners were positively related to the degree of crisis preparedness of these interest groups.     

Getting ready for crises: Strategic excellence

Results of a national survey indicate that organizations are better prepared by having a crisis plan and a crisis management team in place. However, crisis personnel often receive little individual, team, and media training for effective crisis response. Excellent communication culture positively relates to crisis preparations with respect to having a crisis plan, maintaining a crisis team, formulating comprehensive training programs, and engaging in training frequently. Excellence also predicts whether or not public relations professionals are included in a crisis management team.     

Effects of crisis efficacy on intentions to follow directives during crisis

Self-efficacy has consistently been a useful predictor of behavioral intentions as a construct in many theories; yet, its role in audience adherence to instructing information during crisis is relatively unexplored. A national survey (N = 454) examines self-efficacy in public response to crisis directives and develops the concept of crisis efficacy as an important area for future research. In three crisis contexts (food-borne illness, weather emergency, and public health disease threat), crisis efficacy, along with several demographics, significantly predicted public response to instructing information. Crisis efficacy emerges as a construct with great potential to inform message design in crisis communication.     

Factors that influence organisational crisis perception from an internal stakeholder’s point of view

This paper starts from the premise that crisis is a perception and that one of the best ways to conquer a crisis is not to allow it to develop in the first place. By detecting or perceiving a crisis before other stakeholders do, an organisation can prevent or mitigate a crisis. Few studies have considered the question of whether organisations put the right people in the right places to be able to see a crisis coming. Within an organisation, managers are usually well placed to take decisions to initiate crisis communication, but they seem to be reluctant to do so or may not wish to see an impending crisis. Communication professionals should have a better perception of a crisis, but they rarely find themselves in a position to have a substantial impact on the management decision to communicate during a crisis. In this paper, we study crisis perception by individuals in a large governmental organisation during various stages of an unfolding crisis and compared perception scores to individual profiles based on study background, professional situation and crisis experience. This study involves a large-scale scenario-driven survey with ‘crisis perception’ as the main dependent variable. The results of this specific case indicate that an academic communication degree, a high hierarchical position in the organisation and crisis experience are positively related to an augmented perception of an impending organisational crisis.     

Exploring differences in crisis literacy and efficacy on behavioral responses during infectious disease outbreaks

This study examined the effects of literacy and efficacy on individuals’ protective action taking and information seeking during the early phase of infectious disease outbreaks through a nationally representative survey of 1164 U.S. adults. New measures of disaster literacy and crisis efficacy were tested. Overall, results revealed that crisis efficacy and organizational efficacy drove protective action taking and information seeking intentions, while health literacy did not. Disaster literacy negatively predicted both protective action advice seeking and information seeking. The findings highlight the importance of strengthening public efficacy and improving relationships between health authorities and the public, which is greatly influenced by the public’s confidence in the health authority’s management of the crisis.     

Explicating crisis coping in crisis communication

This study explores coping, a core construct in the cognitive appraisal theory of crisis communication, from the public's perspective. The study proposed and tested the hierarchical framework of publics’ crisis coping that examined the relationship among four types of publics’ crisis coping strategies (i.e., relational thinking, emotional venting, instrumental support, and action). For this purpose, a survey was conducted among 168 individuals from a randomly sampled general public population. The proposed model of crisis coping illustrates tenable data-model fits. Key findings of this study include direct effects of rational thinking on action as well as indirect effects of emotional venting on action through instrumental support. The results shed light on the essential coping facilitator role organizations could play in terms of providing publics with instrumental support in times of crisis and facilitate more constructive public responses in the organizational crisis-handling process.     

Scale development for measuring publics’ emotions in organizational crises

Although publics’ emotional responses have gained increasing importance in crisis communication research, reliable scales measuring crisis emotions specific to organizational crises are lacking. As the first study developing a multiple-item scale for measuring publics’ crisis emotions, this study examines the conceptualization and operationalization of attribution-independent crisis emotions versus attribution-dependent crisis emotions by employing two survey data sets (N = 490) for scale development and testing. Results indicate that three types of emotions are likely to be felt by publics when exposed to organizational crises: (1) attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions; (2) external-attribution-dependent (EAD) crisis emotions; and (3) internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) crisis emotions. The scale's reliability, factorial structure, and validity are further assessed. The findings confirm that the underlying processes of publics’ emotions felt in crisis situations are different from those felt in non-crisis situations. Consequently, this scale provides a valid and reliable psychometric tool for researchers and crisis managers to measure publics’ different emotions that are relevant to a crisis situation, as a result of crisis attribution appraisal.     

Information channel preference in health crisis: Exploring the roles of perceived risk,preparedness, knowledge,and intent to follow directives

The 2016 Zika virus epidemic presented a serious threat to public health and left publics confused and anxious about their risks. A survey (n = 370) was distributed in late Summer 2016 in the U.S., when public anxiety regarding Zika was peaking. Results indicate interesting differences in channel preferences based on audiences’ preparedness, risk, and intention to follow crisis directives. Television news was the most important channels for Zika information, indicating the continued importance of traditional media in crisis communication.     

Restoring reputations in times of crisis: An experimental study of the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and the moderating effects of locus of control

This study attempts to provide empirical evidence for Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), which provides guidelines for matching crisis response strategies to crisis types to best restore organizational reputations in times of crisis. The impact of crisis type and crisis response strategies on perceptions of corporate reputation is measured for 316 consumers participating in a 3 (crisis type: victim crisis, accidental crisis, preventable crisis) × 3 (crisis response: deny strategy, diminish strategy, rebuild strategy) between-subjects experimental design. The results show that preventable crises have the most negative effects on organizational reputation and that the rebuild strategy leads to the most positive reputational restoration. Moreover, the more severe people judge a crisis to be, the more negative are their perceptions of the organization's reputation. The interaction effect between crisis type and crisis response strategies on corporate reputation is not significant. However, a person's locus of control has a moderating impact on the relationship between crisis response strategy and organizational reputation. Specifically, the results show that people with an external locus of control prefer the use of deny strategies more than people with an internal locus of control.     

Crisis communication in the rhetorical arena

This study applies and extends the rhetorical arena theory (RAT) of crisis communication with a network analysis. Taking the Volkswagen emission crisis as a case in point, the media discourse in two German and two US-based newspapers was analyzed. Patterns of interaction between various voices that co-construct the rhetorical crisis situation were examined using a relational analysis of statements. A symbolic network was constructed that consisted of rhetorical relations between the actors. The findings show that VW is by far the most prominent voice in the media coverage. However, this prominence is based on the fact that VW mainly appears in the role of the addressee of statements, and that many of the corporation’s statements are self-referential. Politicians and public authorities, as well as experts, have a good chance to actively have their say. Affected stakeholders and NGOs, on the other hand, barely got an opportunity to speak. Overall, the media discourse appears to be dominated by a few high-ranking actors, and the roles and power relationships are distributed very unevenly. Implications of this imbalance in media discourse are discussed, and suggestions for further research are made.     

Crisis communications preparedness among U.S. organizations: Activities and assessments by public relations practitioners

A survey of U.S. public relations practitioners (n = 126) found that three-quarters of their employer organizations had a written crisis communications plan and that organizations, as a whole, were reasonably prepared to engage in crisis communications. Preparedness was measured based on the presence of a crisis plan as well as indices related to tactics, training, the maintenance of contact lists, and media monitoring. Preparedness was found to be positively correlated to organization size, the level of autonomy, and delegation of authority within the organization, and the process orientation of the organization, but not organization type nor involvement in international versus domestic-only operations. Practitioners from organizations with plans had lower assessments of their relationships with publics, but greater confidence in their ability to respond.     

Does severity matter?: An investigation of crisis severity from defensive attribution theory perspective

Although the concept of crisis severity has existed in the crisis communication literature for two decades, it has not been theoretically tested and explained. Based on Defensive Attribution Theory (DAT), this study intends to specify the relationship between crisis severity and crisis responsibility as well as organizational reputation within the SCCT model. Through a 2 (crisis severity) × 3 (crisis type) between-subject factorial experiment (n?=?274), the study revealed that higher crisis severity causes worse reputation regardless of crisis type. For accidental crisis, higher crisis severity leads to higher intentionality, one dimension of crisis responsibility. The findings indicate that crisis severity still has value in SCCT and deserves further investigation.     

The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention

Social media is emerging as critical element of scanning for many crisis risks. When these crisis risks emerge online, people often confuse them with crises and that is why we have developed the term paracrisis. Para can mean “like” something. A paracrisis is like a crisis. It can “look like” a crisis and does require action from the organization. However, a paracrisis does not warrant convening the crisis team and operating in a crisis mode. This paper details the value of paracrises, how to evaluate their threat potential, and ways to respond to them and how to evaluate those responses.     

The parallel power in organizations’ defense: Exploring faith-holders and their crisis communication

Publics can be active participants of discussions around organizational crises. Through digital media, they can provide information about a crisis, criticize crisis participants or defend the organization experiencing the crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 2014). Limited research exists on the active role of publics in defending the organization. A handful of studies have looked at crisis communication of active organization supporters, including faith-holders (Luoma-aho, 2015); however there is a limited amount of public relations scholarship about the nature of faith-holders, their communication under crisis circumstances, and whether they in fact attempt to help organizations in times of crisis. By using a combination of content analysis and rhetorical analysis, this paper examined the crisis communication strategies offered by the organization’s faith-holders in the comments to the crisis-related articles published on the websites of media outlets. Through a case study of Tesla Motors’ crisis, the paper determined that faith-holders are a powerful force in defending the organization during the crisis, using both traditional reputation repair strategies identified by Coombs (2015) as well as new strategies identified by the study. Faith-holders were not a monolithic group and differed in terms of what aspects of the organization they had faith. Their communication was not restricted by legal and ethical demands. The results provide insights into understanding of faith-holders’ communication during crises, and also highlight the need for reconsidering the situational crisis communication theory in respect to organizations' faith-holders.     

Further explorations of post-crisis communication: Effects of media and response strategies on perceptions and intentions

Crisis communication represents a rapidly growing body of research and is seeing an increased use of experimental methods. However, the experiments have relied exclusively on print stimuli resulting in little knowledge of channel effects on crisis communication. This study evaluates the effects of different response strategies and media channels on respondents exposed to a crisis. The study used a 2 (crisis response: sympathy and compassion) × 2 (media: print and video) design. We selected two similar response strategies that could differ in terms of the additional cues provided by video. Results revealed virtually no meaningful difference between the use of video versus print or sympathy versus compensation.     

How financial crisis history informs ethical corporate communication: Insights from corporate communication leaders

This study explored how financial crisis history can inform corporate crisis communication practice across industries and over time. Thirty-eight interviews with chief communications officers (CCOs) and their counselors were conducted to explore what lasting lessons these corporate communication leaders learned from their crisis communication practice during the 2008 Financial Crisis. Key lessons learned include: 1) the importance for corporations to tailor their financial communication strategies according to victim vs. perpetrator perception and ethical response expectations held by stakeholders; 2) the importance of stakeholders, and employees in particular, when creating and implementing the plan; 3) the balance between speed and legal concerns, as well as the need for reducing complexity by making sure stakeholder communications are delivered with clarity and accessibility; and 4) a recipe for success includes honesty, transparency, trust/integrity, taking action to reform questionable practices, and abiding by one’s own personal morals. Insights from this study shed light on how learning contributes to ethical corporate communication practice in times of crisis and crisis spillover.     

Are crisis communicators practicing what we preach?: An evaluation of crisis response strategy analyzed in public relations research from 1991 to 2009

Quantitative content analysis is used to evaluate crisis response strategy analyzed in more than 18 years of research published in crisis communication literature in public relations to reveal its effectiveness, nature, and contextual application. Analysis of 51 articles published in 11 different journals using two dominant theories in public relations crisis communication literature, Benoit's Image Restoration Theory and Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory, indicates a lack of diversity in cases analyzed by scholars, gaps between theory and practice, and pressing directions for future research in crisis communication.     

Public expectations of crisis outcomes in the social media era in China: A communication-mediated psychological mechanism

This study theoretically and empirically identifies a new typology of Chinese publics’ normative expectations of crisis outcomes. It classifies the concept into three culturally relevant dimensions—public expectations of (a) organizational accommodative responses (i.e., how an in-crisis organization should respond), (b) punishment of the organization (i.e., how publics collectively should respond), and (c) government intervention (i.e., how government should respond) for desirable crisis outcomes. Using an online survey of the Beijing public, this study investigates the degree to which information seeking and online expression mediate relationships between crisis blame and the three types of expectations. The study finds that as the level of crisis blame increases, active information seekers expect more regarding organizational accommodation and government intervention, whereas active expressers expect stronger punishments of the organization and less government intervention in China.     

Attribution Theory as a guide for post-crisis communication research

The field of crisis communication is poised to take the next in its evolution. Now is the time to move beyond the limits of the case study methods that shape the field's development and shift to empirical methods. As the field matures, crisis managers need recommendations that are based on scientifically tested evidence rather than speculation. The argument for scientifically tested evidence for action is based on the evidence-based in management and medicine. This article discusses the role Attribution Theory has played and can continue to play in building scientifically tested evidence for crisis managers as well as providing an integrative mechanism for the diverse crisis research that spans a variety of disciplines.     

Contingency,conflict, crisis: Strategy selection of religious public relations professionals

A national survey among religious public relations practitioners working for mainstream Protestant Christian churches was undertaken to examine strategic options in a conflict or crisis. Religious public relations professionals tend to employ collaborating, contending or compromising in a conflict with a given public, while they are likely to use concession or corrective action in a crisis. Internal contingent factors are mostly associated with accommodating, avoiding, concession or corrective action strategies, while contending is most often correlated with external contingent factors.