2/22/10

Week9: An Issue-Crisis Perspective (Part1)


As i read about this chapter, I find it quite shocking when a study (Farmer & Tvedt, 2005) was conducted and identified that 27 percent of organisations which undergo crisis cannot survive. A crisis often occurs when issues are well managed. The reaction of key publics during a crisis will determine if the company survives and is able to recover. In this case the media is a very important source as it is the medium that organisations use to communicate with their key public. Therefore, public relations practitioners have to develop a precise strategy in order to save the organisation. As technology improves over the years, it is undeniable that the internet is very important today. Public Relations practitioners are also using this widely known tool to spread their messages across as the web is accessible to almost everybody through a click of the mouse.

It is only now that I realised that a crisis is quite different from an issue. An issue is something that seeks to identify potential, emerging trends, concerns while a crisis usually catches organisations unknowingly. An example of an issue would be AlGore coming up with a documentary called "The inconvenient Truth" to alert people about issues on global warming. In line with what Hath (1997) had mentioned, I totally agree that issues management is a function dedicate to assisting organisations to understand and strategically adapt to their public policy environment. Through that, I feel that it somehow makes one more prepared. Issue monitoring is extremely important in my opinion because it is something that needs to be done constantly.

I feel that Fink (1986)'s crisis life cycle is a bit confusing. The different phases are actually represented through time, like how things will worsen after more and more people find out about the crisis. Overall, I think that we should always be prepared for any major hiccups along the way cause hiccups are usually unavoidable. However, it really depends on how we go and face it and what actions we take to actually solve the problems.

2 comments:

  1. Your post has given me a new insight in to the Crisis Management argument

    Whether or not an issue relates to a crisis, you did well to explain it here and make sense

    Kudos to this, it helped me in understanding the topic better!

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  2. Actually when I read that 27% do not survive I think it refers to those that are either 1. being bought over 2. bankrupt or 3. Really did something very bad that caused much anger among the public, thus their chances of rebounding diminishing.

    I agree with you that Fink's cycle is rather confusing as I do not foresee all crises having the same routine otherwise crises would be a breeze to handle!

    ZR
    www.zrhasspoken.blogspot.com

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