Crisis Communication: Organizational Resilience - Term Paper Example

? Crisis Communication: Organizational Resilience Introduction Organizations operate in an environment that experiences varied kinds of turbulences which have the potential of significantly influencing the normal operations. Among the major turbulences that organizations have practically faced in the past include the 2008 economic crisis which according to Zhang and Liu (2012) systematically impacted major banks and subsequently leading to a global recession. In the same year, a Chinese food company, Sanlu, added melamine meant to boost protein levels in milk powder products in excessive quantities which resulted in the deaths of six children and illness among other 300,000. It is out of the prevalence of such crises that organizations have developed crisis communication skills among its professionals with more public and non-profit organizations recognizing the critical role played by crisis communication in human resources, public relations and leadership teams. The term crisis has been widely used casually in expression of a state of trouble. But according to Zhang and Liu (2012), not all difficult times in an organization would be termed as a point of crisis. Crises describe unique historical moments in an organization, with Tinker and Vaughan (2010) identifying three characteristics that distinguish crises from other obnoxious occurrences: threat, surprise and short response time. Therefore, an occurrence would not be considered as a crisis if it fails to be surprising, does not pose serious threat levels and the response time available could be considered to be adequate enough to handle it. As such, adopting the definition by the US Department of Health and Human Services (2012), organizational crisis refers to a specific, non-routine and unexpected event which arouses a high sense of uncertainty and simultaneously presenting both the threats to and opportunities for an organization’s priority goals. It would be important to note that while risks occur naturally in life, crises could be avoided. Due to the potential effect of crises in organizations, crisis communication has been adopted by many organizations. According to Tinker and Vaughan, crisis communication refers to “the exchange of risk-relevant and safety information during an emergency situation” (2010, 1). Whereas risk communication encompasses what would happen in future, crisis communication tackles events happening at the moment in the context of limited time for collaborative decision making, consensus building and interaction with the victims. In as much as crises would mostly be accompanied by some degree of risks, they do not always lead to negative outcome. According to Zhang and Liu (2012), crises could present opportunities that could cause an organization to be even better than it was before the occurrence of such crises. This is referred to as organizational resilience. While resilience in general refers to a system’s ability to resist a major change, in business, the meaning could be minimally modified now that change has been considered inevitable for all business organizations. Therefore, instead of focusing on resistance to change, the focus has been on cost, that is, adopting ways of change implementation at minimum cost and with as little stress as possible. Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (2009) identified two imperatives for successful resilient organizations. According to this scholar, such organizations manage for growth and performance which entails efficiency, consistency, maximization of short term results and elimination of waste. The second imperative revolves around management for adaptation which calls for innovation, experimentation, foresight and improvisation with a long term goal. Each of these imperatives calls for different organizational design and skill set. These imperatives inform the following six characteristics of organizational resilience. Characteristics of Organizational Resilience Organizational resilience involves possession of adaptive capacity which promotes active consideration of the environment. In their discussion of six characteristics that point towards organizational resilience, Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (2009) observe that through monitoring of both the external and internal change indicators, identifications of disruptions would be accomplished in advance. The aim would be to seek for information on potential crises and testing them against existing assumptions and models. This would enhance detection of the unexpected and timely response for exploitation of opportunity or avert any possible irreversible damage. Secondly, organizational resilience involves preparedness. Organizations would prepare themselves and its employees too for crises. This makes up a team that has the ability to imagine varied possibilities and identify possible solutions for the same. According to Tinker and Vaughan (2010), this would also involve cross-training employees for various functions and in varied skills. This appreciates that under pressure, as in the case of a crisis, people would employ their most habitual responses. Furthermore, organizational resilience would have flexibility as part of its building blocks. To ensure redundancy, most organizations would have backup capacities be it for staff, finances, inventories or the likes. But Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (2009) quash this approach, choosing to support flexibility as a better approach. According to the scholars, employees exposed to virtual workspaces would be more productive and adaptive in cases of crises with research indicating that flexibility in work practices lead to greater resilience, commitment, lower stress levels and productivity among employees. On the fourth characteristic, organizational resilience promotes innovation with the outcome of experiments informing future decisions on which models to adopt, modify or abandon. As such, there would be greater involvement in market research, continued service improvements and product development. Another component of organizational resilience as identified by Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (2009) includes the cultivation of culture with well defined values and purpose. Sharing the purpose of the organization with the relevant stakeholders could provide the much needed flexibility in times of crisis. These stakeholders would try and find opportunities for new approaches so as to come up with creative solutions for achievement of greater results. Of key importance in organizational resilience would finally be its communication component. A redundant and robust communication infrastructure would help an organization sail through a crisis. This applies also to external relationships involving customers and suppliers. Using the same network, this would also propagate decision making. Organizational resilience ensures decisions get to where they could be handled most effectively in an organization hence the need for appropriate access to information in the whole organization. Significance of organizational resilience There has been much debate on whether organizational resilience describes the modern day business continuity. According to Coombs and Holladay (2012), business continuity works towards the maintenance of operations in case of a crisis with the idea being to avoid loss of money due to operation below normal levels. This could also include business continuity efforts aimed at salvaging equipment and data, traditionally referred to as data recovery. Resilience goes beyond this to ensure the availability of business functions after a crisis. Zhang and Liu (2012) note that organizational resilience enables organizations to productively respond to crises that disrupts normal operations without involvement in extended regressive behavior periods. According to the scholars, though business continuity reduces organizational losses, resilience would encompass learning through the crises and mistakes and linking various knowledge systems that would support learning and adaptation for the enhancement of effective feedback loops and maintenance of organizational redundancy and diversity. According to Zhang and Liu (2012), the perspective of organizational resilience plays a critical role in analyzing the adaptation of an organization. While a considerable proportion of literature dwells on reduction of organization’s vulnerabilities to risk, resilience approach concerns the development of resilience sources so as to ensure robustness to uncertainty and maintenance of necessary flexibility for response to change. Moreover, since it deals with adaptation dynamics, resilience helps in the exploration of strategic options for organizations bearing in mind their operation under constant uncertainty and change. It inspires thoughts on future strategies in the wake of turbulent business environment. As such, in its emphasis on organization’s capability of dealing with adversity, it provides for varied ways of adaptation including an organization’s ability to adapt to changes or learn from such and appropriately reorganize itself. To attain continued organizational resilience, crisis communication plays a critical role with various sources suggesting varied ways of approaching this. According to Tinker and Vaughan (2010), crisis communication should exhibit care to the stakeholders so as to earn their trust. The authors also observe the importance of appointing an appropriate spokesperson who would ensure timely release of information during such times of crisis. Even negative information should be released in time to avoid misinformation in the explanation of the happenings. This supports the postulation by Coombs and Holladay that “while organizations cannot control the occurrence and unpredictability of crises, they can determine how to respond to them and control, to a large extent, how communication ought to be conducted” (2012, 530). Organizations should be keen to take action that would keep its stakeholders safe. Meadows (2008) acknowledges the changing environment and the current dynamic business environment. As such, complexities in crisis communication arise in delivering the intended message to the recipients. Therefore, communication would not be simple and linear as it inherently used to be, which implies that organizations should embrace emergent approaches to crisis communication such as making use of social media. The US Department of Health and Human Services (2012) provides the communication life cycle that propagates organizational resilience in case of a crisis. In order to effectively apply this cycle, this government agency suggests the need to understand the crisis patterns so as to enable communicators anticipate arising problems and devise appropriate response. Because each crisis undergoes specific phases, crisis communication also undergoes specific phases with each phase calling for creation and delivery of appropriate message. The pre-crisis phase involves education campaigns to sensitize stakeholders on possible crises. The second phase referred to as the initial phase would encompass communication to the affected audience. At the maintenance phase, the audience would be engaged so as to ensure flow of information while at the resolution phase, the situation could be returned to normalcy. The final phase of evaluation involves an assessment of the response including discussion, documentation and sharing of lessons learnt. Conclusion Coping with change has been indicated as the essence of business management and understanding the way organizations overcome crises has led to adoption of appropriate crisis communication skills which has boosted organizational resilience. Due to crises posing potential threat, surprise and availing only short response time, organizations should adopt appropriate crisis communication strategies to ensure effective information flow so as to resolve the issues within reasonable time. Organizational resilience postulates that organizations should adapt to such crises and undertake appropriate measures to ensure business continuity. This would be indicated by exhibition of adaptive capabilities, preparedness, flexibility, innovation, adoption of appropriate organizational culture and ability to communicate effectively. Organizational resilience in essence describes an organization’s ability to address disruptive events, otherwise referred to as crises, overcome and rise above them, emerging more resourceful and strengthened. It entails adaptive capabilities which would enable an organization effectively respond to change while simultaneously enduring minimal discontinuity. References Coombs, W. T. & Holladay, S. J. (Eds.). (2012). The handbook of crisis communication. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Johnson-Lenz, P. & Johnson-Lenz, T. (2009). Six habits of highly resilient organizations. People and Place, 1(3). Retrieved 20 December 2012 from http://peopleandplace.net/perspectives/2009/2/2/six_habits_of_highly_resilient_organizations Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Tinker, T. L. & Vaughan, E. (2010). Risk and crisis communications: best practices for government agencies and non-profit organizations. McClean, Virginia: Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012). Crisis and emergency risk communication manual. Atlanta, GA: Author. Zhang, R. & Liu, W. (2012). Organizational resilience perspective: facilitating organizational adaptation analysis. International Conference on Economics Marketing and Management, 28, 55 – 59. Read More