Be it the much debated recent controversy of pesticides in the soft drinks, or the famous Tylenol tampering episode of 1982events like these can be a potential threat to the organization's reputation bringing in financial, social and ethical challenges. Such events, generally termed as crises can be managed and the damage can be minimized provided organizations have effective public relations departments. Is your PR active?
One of the leading researcher Gary Kreps has defined crisis management as "the use of public relations to minimize harm to the organization in emergency situations that could cause the organization irreparable damage". In 1992, Pauchant and Mitroff in their book on Crisis Management proposed a continuum, beginning with an incident, followed by conflict, and ending with a crisis. These authors defined crisis as the most serious form of disruption. Organizational crises have been described as specific, unexpected and non-routine events or series of events, which create high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization's high priority goals. Companies face crises all the time.
High level of public activism and media accessibility to the public make matters worse for these organizations. The press reporters are always ready to dig up information for the smallest of issue and can make things look really bad. Organizations hardly find time to cope with this reputational damage. Just recall the recent Coke episode, wherein there were debates, discussions, news and a whole lot of controversy after the Center for Science and Environment, New Delhi reported that colas in India have high levels of pesticides. Within a short period of time the sales dropped by approximately 10-15%. And to quantify the subsequent reputational damage is really difficult. |
