882981

research-article2019
JOBXXX10.1177/2329488419882981International Journal of Business CommunicationMarsen

Article
International Journal of
Business Communication
Navigating Crisis: The 2020, Vol. 57(2) 163­–175
© The Author(s) 2019
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Organizational Crisis DOI: 10.1177/2329488419882981
https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488419882981
journals.sagepub.com/home/job

Sky Marsen1

Abstract
This article introduces the special issue on crisis communication, whose aim is to
bring together diverse approaches and methods of analysis in the field. The article
overviews the field by discussing two main frameworks, dealing with postcrisis
(reputation management) and precrisis (issue management) communication,
respectively. The article then overviews some major theories of crisis communication
and their different methodologies: image repair, situational crisis communication
theory, rhetorical arena theory, narrative, and integrated crisis mapping. It ends with
a description of some lessons learned that apply to all approaches and an overview
of the contributions to the issue. By comparing and contrasting different perspectives
on crisis communication, the article emphasizes the rich diversity that characterizes
this branch of business communication.

Keywords
narrative, organizational communication, public relations, risk communication

Overview
This special issue takes as its starting point the premise that the communication unfold-
ing before, during, and after an organizational crisis can be studied and understood
using diverse approaches and methods, each suited to shed light on particular aspects
of the crisis. In some ways, the situation resembles the famous Indian story of the six
blind men who knew of the existence of elephants but had never seen one. When they
finally encountered an elephant, each man touched a different part of its body and
came up with a different conclusion as to the elephant’s appearance: the trunk made

1Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Corresponding Author:
Sky Marsen, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, 234 Bedford park,
Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia.
Email: skymarsen@gmail.com
164 International Journal of Business Communication 57(2)

the elephant seem like a snake, the tail made it seem like a rope, the side made it seem
like a wall, the tusk made it seem like a spear, the leg made it seem like a tree, and the
ear made it seem like a fan. In a comparable manner, crises are a complex and multi-
faceted phenomenon and crisis communication research emphasizes different aspects
and uses diverse methods to analyze them.
Organizational crises affect the management of an organization, employees and
stakeholders, and the society in which the organization operates. Defined as “an
untimely but predictable event that has actual or potential consequences for stakehold-
ers” interests as well as the reputation of the organization suffering the crisis’ (Millar
& Heath, 2004, p. 64), crises occur in all industries, social contexts, and organizational
structures. Although they are generally unexpected and disruptive to the routine func-
tioning of the organization, they are ubiquitous and unsurprising.
Approaching a crisis situation from a communication perspective always brings
into play the nature and context of the crisis. Crises differ depending on the type of
crisis, degree of company responsibility, extent of the damage, number of stakeholders
involved, kind of industry involved, and the organization’s existing reputation and his-
tory. For instance, as a rule of thumb, a crisis that has occurred because of a “slip of
the tongue” on the part of a representative of a nonprofit organization is not likely to
be as serious or long lasting as the crisis that involves extensive environmental dam-
age and/or loss of life due to a corporation’s “cutting corners” or not implementing
sufficient safety measures in their procedures.
Crisis communication engages both practitioners and scholars in terms of ethics,
problem solving, strategy, and effective interpersonal communication. How organiza-
tions manage crisis, and how they deal with risk are important concerns for both pro-
fessionals and academics who research business communication. From an
organizational perspective, managing a crisis effectively is crucial in reestablishing
control of the organization, restoring the company image, and regaining stakeholder
trust. From an academic perspective, examining the strategies employed during a cri-
sis sheds light on how values, assumptions, and intentions are acted out in communi-
cation practices.
To avoid a vague and unspecified delineation of “crisis” and to pinpoint their object
of study with more accuracy, theorists of organizational communication and public
relations have proposed different classifications and typologies of crises (Coombs,
2010; Snyder, Hall, Robertson, Jasinski, & Miller, 2006). One way of seeing crises is
as preventable, cases where actions could have been taken to avoid the events that led
to the crisis (such as data breaches), or unpreventable, cases where no action could be
taken to avoid the crisis events (such as natural disasters). Crises are also seen as exter-
nal or internal, depending on whether the crisis began through the actions of an agent
inside or outside the organization. Finally, they can be classified as intentional (such
as sabotage), or unintentional (such as accidents; Coombs, 1995; Marcus & Goodman,
1991; Ulmer, Sellnow, & Seeger, 2015).
According to another classification, crises can be grouped in relation to the degree
of responsibility that is attributed to them by the public and the existing reputation of
the organization (Coombs, 2007). This grouping is based on attribution of blame and
Marsen 165

approaches crises in terms of “clusters”: the victim cluster consists of cases where the
organization can show that it not only was not responsible for the crisis, but actually
suffered from it; the accidental cluster consists of cases when the crisis resulted from
an accident that was either nonpreventable or of demonstrable low risk; and the pre-
ventable cluster, consists of cases when human error, negligence, or corruption led to
the crisis event, and where public attribution of blame is at its highest. Following this
classification, the ways in which organizations should explain and communicate the
crisis depends on the type of crisis and their degree of involvement in it.
Yet another classification divides crises into four major, nonexclusive categories:
performance crises, in which an organization has failures in production, technical mal-
functions, or errors in judgment; disaster crises, in which an organization suffers an
accident or natural disaster; attack crises, in which the media or competitors attack the
reputation of an organization; and moral crises, in which the nature of the organization
clashes with prevailing social norms and values, as may be the case in industries whose
products pose risk to health or the environment (Morris & Goldsworthy, 2012).

Approaches to Crisis Communication

Although crisis communication is generally classified as a public relations subject, its
rich and varied subject matter opens it up to a plethora of approaches and methods.
Areas of enquiry dealing with crisis communication encompass discourse analysis,
management, technical writing (instructing information, checklists), sociology, and
media theory, among other disciplines. In fact, two major theoretical frameworks for
crisis communication research are clearly apparent. In public relations research and
practice, “crisis communication” refers to the actions of an organization, during and
after a crisis event has occurred—crisis and postcrisis stages. It includes the study of
the ways in which the organization manages the crisis in order to reestablish some
control over the factors involved, to resolve the issues that emerged, and to restore its
reputation in the eyes of stakeholders and the public. Crisis communication research-
ers explore the ways organizations respond to, explain and justify the crises events,
the actions they take to investigate the causes of the crisis, the ways they communi-
cate these actions to the public, and the ways they use different media to repair their
damaged image.
Technical accidents leading to environmental disasters, product recalls, financial
failure, managerial corruption, and information leaks are some situations that require
effective and ethical communication to internal and external stakeholders (Coombs,
2007, 2015; Fearn-Banks, 2016; Gilpin & Murphy, 2008). Well publicized cases,
such as the BP Oil Spill of 2010 (Diers-Lawson & Pang, 2016; Smithson & Venette,
2013), the repeated product recalls of car manufacturers Toyota and GM since 2010
(Bauman, 2011; Bowen & Zheng, 2015), the Sony privacy breach of 2015 (Elhai &
Hall, 2016) and the Volkswagen emissions scandal of 2016 (Raupp, 2019), to name
just a few, have shown that the communication aspects of a crisis determine how an
organization continues to function after the crisis and are matters of concern to public
relations specialists.
166 International Journal of Business Communication 57(2)

More recently, this branch of crisis communication research has broadened its
scope to include studies of terrorism (Canel, 2012; Falkheimer, 2014; Somerville &
Purcell, 2011) and studies of celebrities (Brazeal, 2008; Colapinto & Benecchi, 2014;
Maiorescu, 2017). Such research challenges existing definitions of crisis by bringing
into play governmental responses to multifaceted events that involve a wide range of
stakeholders as well as the reputation building strategies of individuals.
The second framework focuses on crisis prevention by examining communica-
tion issues that led to the emergence and escalation of the crisis. Encompassed in
“issue management,” approaches in this framework investigate the ways in which
avoidance of risks and miscommunication can lead to preventable crises (Boin &
Lagadec, 2000; Jaques, 2014; Normandin & Therrien, 2016). Some of these stud-
ies explore how crises can be prevented by stakeholders identifying risk elements
and working toward building organizational “resilience”—ability to survive and
bounce back after a crisis (Chewning, Lai, & Doerfel, 2013; Strauss & Junkman,
2017).
Other studies explore how communication issues are interwoven in events that
lead to disastrous situations even in cases where the events themselves may be non-
communicative or technical in nature (Herndl, Fennell, & Miller, 1991; Linde, 1988;
Marsen, 2014; H. Smith & Keil, 2003; Taylor & Van Every, 2015). Understanding
these issues provides a path to assessing the company’s attitude to risk, to “what can
go wrong,” given that crisis can be seen as “risk manifested” (Heath & O’Hair,
2009). For example, in many instances, stakeholders know or suspect that certain
procedures are risky or certain equipment is faulty but do not communicate these
concerns to the appropriate decision makers at a suitable time, or do not communi-
cate with an adequate degree of urgency, prompting management to overlook or
dismiss the risk.
The Columbia Space Shuttle accident is a case in point. The accident was due to
a technical issue: a piece of foam was dislodged from the main tank during lift-off
and struck the left wing. This led to the formation of a Debris Assessment Team
charged with investigating the damage caused by the foam. The Team’s analysis
indicated that the shuttle was most likely seriously damaged but, to be able to pres-
ent an unequivocal assessment, they needed imagery of the shuttle in space. In sev-
eral attempts to obtain the images, the Team did not communicate their concerns
with adequate clarity and urgency to the appropriate recipients and thus no action
was taken to prevent the accident (Guthrie & Shayo, 2005; M. S. Smith, 2008;
Starbuck & Farjoun, 2005).
In a Press Conference after the accident, Admiral Gehman pointed out that the loss
of Columbia was due not only to the foam incident that damaged the wing but also to
the absence of an effective system of checks and balances, which would ensure that
the technical fault was acknowledged and addressed (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=i1XdUq_-dq0). In this and other comparable cases, regardless of how the
organization managed the crisis in their public relations strategy after the event, post-
crisis, its communication practices were already singled out as a major trigger of the
event in the precrisis stage (Boin & Schulman, 2008; Dombrowski, 2006).
Marsen 167

Crisis Communication Theories and Methodologies

According to Oxford Dictionary, a theory is a “supposition or a system of ideas
intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent
of the thing to be explained” (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/theory). Theories
evolve from observed patterns in phenomena and are used to analyze and interpret
occurrences of other similar phenomena. Through their experience in collecting and
comparing multiple instances of organizational crisis, researchers have developed a
number of theories of effective and ineffective communication strategies. The 1990s
saw an expansion of crisis communication research, propelled by the rise of digital
media and the occurrence of major, global, crises events that occurred in the previous
decade, notably the Tylenol poisoning case (1982), the Union Carbide gas leak in
Bhopal (1984), the Challenger shuttle accident (1986), the Chernobyl nuclear accident
(1986), and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989). These events were pivotal in
arousing interest in how companies communicated their knowledge of the events and
justified their actions in containing or repairing the damage.
Building on rhetorical apologia methodologies (Burke, 1970; Hearit, 1995), the
highly influential image repair theory (IRT; Benoit, 1995, 1997) distinguishes five
major strategies that companies may use after a crisis. These are placed on a contin-
uum from least to most acceptance of responsibility. At one extreme are Denial strate-
gies, which distance the organization from the crisis completely. These include cases
of shifting the blame, such as in “scapegoating,” denying that the event occurred or
claiming that the event was not harmful. Evasion of Responsibility strategies limit
organizational accountability for the crisis by claiming the event was accidental, or
that it occurred because of lack of knowledge or lapse of judgment. Reducing
Offensiveness of Event strategies, possibly the most common and complex category,
focus on positive aspects of the organization in an attempt to draw attention away from
the events of the crisis. Corrective Action strategies emphasize procedures and behav-
iors that attempt to solve the problem and/or to ensure that is it is not repeated. Finally,
at the other extreme of Denial are Mortification strategies which include acceptance of
responsibility and apology.
Despite some critiques of its universality, IRT serves as the foundation of much
crisis communication research and has led to diverse reformulations since it was first
proposed. Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT; Coombs, 2007) refocuses
attention from company strategy to public perception by introducing the factor of
“attribution,” borrowed from social psychology and defined as the degree of blame
stakeholders are likely to place on a company after a crisis, based on the company’s
prior reputation. SCCT hypothesizes that the perceived acceptance of responsibility by
the organization must match the perceived crisis responsibility attributed to the orga-
nization by stakeholders. SCCT reformulates IRT strategies into four “postures,” con-
sisting of Denial, Diminishment, Rebuilding, and Bolstering (Coombs, 2014). Much
SCCT work is based on survey research often using experimental data to gauge stake-
holder responses to real or hypothetical crisis situations (Claeys, Cauberghe, &
Vyncke, 2010; Ki & Nekmat, 2014).
168 International Journal of Business Communication 57(2)

In discourse of renewal theory (DRT), the emphasis changes from how an organization
justifies and explains its crisis-related actions to how it reforms its image for the future
(Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2003; Seeger & Ulmer, 2002). According to DRT, to manage
a crisis effectively, an organization needs to reconsider its identity and social position. DRT
researchers focus on the organization’s vision for the future and the changes it needs to
undertake in order to revive its image and reposition itself in its social context and industry.
This is the most “optimistic” theory, encouraging organizations to detect opportunity
within crisis. It uses mostly rhetorical and discursive methods of text analysis to examine
ways of identifying strategies of recovery by eliminating policies and practices that have
proved ineffective, while creating new ones that are more suited to a renewed, forward-
looking approach (Griffin-Padgett & Allison, 2010; Seeger & Griffin Padgett, 2010).
Not surprisingly, early DRT cases involved natural disasters, accidents, and other
unpreventable crises which did not tarnish the organizational reputation irrevocably,
allowing it to bounce back more easily (Seeger & Ulmer, 2002). More recent studies
stretched the limits of DRT by applying it to preventable or more complex crises
(Reierson, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2009; Veil, Sellnow, & Wickline, 2013).
Other theorists point to the fact that crises involve a plethora of stakeholders with
divergent perspectives and interests. Research into crisis communication should,
therefore, cater to the multiplicity of voices, or “multivocality,” present. The rhetorical
arena theory builds on the “arena” metaphor, a location where different actors com-
pete, debate, and negotiate under the public eye (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010, 2017).
This theory focuses on the perspectives of the different stakeholders and the strategies
they use to advance their interests and concerns in a crisis situation. Associated with
strategic communication, rhetorical arena theory encompasses the relationship aspects
of communication and explores how the discourses produced in crisis situations pro-
duce diverse interpretations of the crisis. Rhetorical arena theory takes the emphasis
away from organizational discourses or media discourses seen in isolation and instead
explores “patterns of interaction” (Frandsen & Johansen, 2017, p. 148).
Researchers following this approach filter their analyses through four parameters,
the context, which includes the type of crisis, the event and the participants; the media,
the channels used to communicate; the genre, being the document types produced,
such as press releases and company statements; and the text, the strategic choices
made when constructing a message within specific genres. Although this approach has
its roots in the rhetorical tradition, it has generated work using different methodolo-
gies, including mixed methods (Raupp, 2019).
From a different but complementary perspective, narrative approaches examine the
ways in which a crisis event is perceived and communicated in stories that can some-
times conflict. The conflicting narratives produced during a crisis reflect the interests
and worldviews of different individuals and groups and provide a rich source of data
for the study of persuasion and (mis)communication. Narrative theory has a respect-
able relationship with organizational and business communication (Boje, 2001; Floch,
2001), and its emphasis on chronology and the roles and interactions of participants
makes it well-suited to the analysis of crisis communication cases (Gabriel, 2000;
Fenton & Langley, 2011; Heath, 2004; Marsen, 2014).
Marsen 169

It is well attested that humans, universally, make sense of their environment and
their position in it through stories, and narrative is often found at the base of most
meaning-making activities. Conversational interactions can be studied in terms of the
stories they construct, but, further than this, complex texts as well as the structure of
the organization can be seen in narrative terms (Boudes & Laroche, 2009; Czarniawska,
1997; Taylor, 1993). Following the work of narratologists, narrative is often divided
into two levels, the story, which includes the chronological events, the participants and
their interrelationships, and the discourse, the ways in which the story is told strategi-
cally to foreground certain aspects while backgrounding others (Marsen, 2006). In this
respect, the same events can be represented differently, with one version positioning
the organization as a helper and another one positioning it as an opponent. Narrative
choices also include whether a text positions the organization in the role of active
agent or passive recipient of the actions of others, as well as what the text describes as
changed or unchanged.
The narratives extrapolated from organizational, governmental, and media texts
position the participants in certain roles and are, therefore, crucial in distributing
causal factors and responsibility. For example, in their study of the Enron collapse,
Boje and Rosile (2003) suggest that there was a tendency, in both media and regula-
tory communication, to represent the story as a tragedy with the organizational actors
as tragic heroes. This tends to place responsibility more squarely on certain individu-
als’ actions by emphasizing bad judgment and personality flaws. This, in turn, easily
leads to scapegoating as a solution to the problem. The authors propose that a more
productive narrative approach would be to construct the story as an epic, which would
increase the number of narrating voices, shifting the focus from individuals to the
underlying system that produced them and allowed them to act.
A final theory to mention here is integrated crisis mapping (ICM: Jin, Pang, &
Cameron, 2007, 2010). Crises are intense and highly emotional situations that affect
the mental and physical well-being of large numbers of individuals. How these indi-
viduals express their emotions in the public context and in their interactions with the
organization as well as how the organization handles these emotions are important
matters in evaluating the organization’s management of the crisis. As crises tend to
involve negative emotions, ICM considers four core emotions, anger, anxiety, fright,
and sadness, and explores their manifestations in relation to the public’s coping strate-
gies and the degree of involvement by the organization.
These coping strategies are divided into cognitive, dealing with how affected stake-
holders think about the crisis, and conative, dealing with the actions they take to
change or improve the situation. The degree of organizational involvement is mea-
sured on the number of resources and amount of effort needed to manage the crisis.
Organizational involvement also depends on the type of crisis: nonpreventable, exter-
nal crises, such as natural disasters, would necessitate high-organizational involve-
ment because of the extent of the crisis and the need for resources. However,
nonpreventable, internal crises, such as workplace violence, might require lower orga-
nizational involvement, especially if the organization cannot be expected to prevent
such events.
170 International Journal of Business Communication 57(2)

Lessons Learned
Regardless of the differences in epistemology and method, research in crisis commu-
nication has produced some common findings that form the backbone of professional
advice given to organizations on handling crisis. Since “lesson learning” is integral to
crisis communication, this introduction ends with a brief description of four major
findings on which all theories and methods would concur:

1. Rapid response to a crisis event is beneficial to organizations. Research has

shown repeatedly that the longer an organization takes to respond to a crisis,
the more it suffers in the eyes of the public and stakeholders. This observation
has become particularly pertinent in the era of social media, which facilitate
immediate, two-way symmetric communication. This is one of the reasons
why social media research is a growing field in crisis communication.
2. Selecting appropriate spokespersons to communicate with the public during
and after a crisis is a strategic decision that can have far reaching results.
Spokespersons must inform, instruct, and reassure a variety of stakeholders,
often at short notice. What they say can exonerate the organization but can also
lead to conflict and legal repercussions. Although the spokespersons are
expected to speak on behalf of the organization, they are also often expected to
show a personal commitment and, possibly, an emotional tone, producing con-
flicting intentions in discursive choices. Therefore, this is a very important role
that needs to be considered carefully. In fact, cultural factors play a major role
in how the spokesperson is received, because such variables as gender, ethnic-
ity, and emotional performance are culturally regulated (Bauman, 2011; James
& Wooten, 2005). This leads directly to the next “lesson.”
3. In a globalized world, paying attention to local cultures can play a major role
in effective communication. For example, although, as noted in “Lesson 2,”
CEO engagement is generally encouraged to show acknowledgement of the
seriousness of the situation, if the CEO is an “outsider” this choice might be
problematic. For example, during the BP Oil Spill crisis of 2010, British
CEO Tony Hayward and Swedish President Carl-Henric Svanberg repre-
sented the company in media engagement. They also attended the scene and
interacted with the local stakeholders. However, both were markedly outsid-
ers to the region and its concerns, which contributed to a cold reception by
the local stakeholders. In one instance, Svanberg even referred to the local
population as “the small people” (evidently a translation “slip”), which added
further fuel to the general confusion of the company’s handling of the crisis
(Herron, 2010).
4. Spokespersons who cater for diverse audiences in their communication during
a crisis tend to be more successful than those who make generic, “one size fits
all” statements. For example, during the Toyota accelerator crisis in 2010, in
which a family was killed in the United States when the brakes of their car
failed, President Akio Toyoda apologized and expressed personal condolences
Marsen 171

to the Saylor family, who suffered the loss. This strategy was generally accepted
positively in media responses. In contrast, during the Exxon Valdez oil spill
crisis in 1989, the company produced several apology statements in most cases
addressed to “the people of Alaska.” However, they overlooked the group of
people who had suffered the most in the crisis, the fishing population. It is no
surprise, therefore, that their crisis management was found to be inadequate
(Hearit, 1995).

Contributions to Special Issue

The articles in this special issue were selected specifically to represent the diversity of
crisis communication research, in their subject, theoretical framework, and method.
Hugo Marynissen and Mike Lauder examine the Brussels terrorist attacks of 2016
from a first respondents’ perspective. They advocate for a practical approach to crisis
preparedness proposing that such an approach can be seen as a strategy to enhance
organizational reputation since it increases stakeholder trust. Su Lin Yeo, Augustine
Pang, Michelle Cheong, and Jerome Quincy contribute to the analysis of social media
using ICM and content analysis. They explore the emotional responses of stakehold-
ers after Malaysia Airlines declared they would stop the search for missing Airline
Flight MH370 and they find that “joy,” in the form of relief, can be added to the four
core emotions, anger, anxiety, fright, and sadness. Using a discourse of renewal
approach, Lindsey Anderson and Sylvia Guo examine the image repair strategies of
Wells Fargo, after the account fraud crisis of 2016. They show how Wells Fargo used
their history and existing imagery strategically to recreate their future identity by
anchoring it in the past.
Randall Waller and Christina Iluzada discuss the framing strategies of two oppos-
ing organizations—the creators of the documentary Blackfish and the entertainment
park SeaWorld—after the events involving the whale Tilikum’s mauling of a trainer in
SeaWorld in 2010. Using a rhetorical approach, they show how framing techniques
can produce competing stories and they evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques
in light of which story prevailed on the public’s perception of the crisis events.
Katharina Barkley uses an experimental, quantitative, methodology to consider the
role of culture in the perception of CEO ethnicity during crisis situations in Japan.
Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen end the special issue by discussing the differences
and similarities between academic research and practitioner observations. They iden-
tify and compare message strategies in a range of popular crisis management books
and suggest that practitioner advice complements the work undertaken by scholars,
encouraging a closer collaboration between the two groups.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to the reviewers who contributed to this special issue by offering invaluable insights
and advice on the articles. I acknowledge the contribution of Theresa Castor, Geert Jacobs,
Roxana Maiorescu, Timothy Sellnow, Malinda Steenkamp, Petra Theunissen, Annette
Watkins, and Sifan Xu.
172 International Journal of Business Communication 57(2)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Sky Marsen   https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7277-7386

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Author Biography
Sky Marsen researches organizational communication, crisis communication, professional
writing and discourse analysis. She has taught professional communication subjects at univer-
sities internationally and published widely in the field. She is an Associate Editor at the
International Journal of Business Communication.