Crisis Communications
Crisis communication is the most important aspect of external and internal organization communication. This type of communication ranges from image restoration campaigns to employee turnover. In the articles that I have analyzed, I discovered many examples of crisis communications and its importance. I will discuss the Bridgestone-Firestone Corporation's image restoration campaign and explain Benoit's theory of image restoration. Also, I will discuss how crisis communications fits into public relations models. Two examples for discussion will be how supervisors should convey bad-news to their employees, and group communication within employee turnover. My last example for this discussion will be Bill Clinton's image repair discourse. This essay will analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of crisis communications and its place within an organization. As stated earlier, I will discuss different examples retrieved from five scholarly articles that are relevant to this topic. I hope to convey the importance of crisis communications. In the article "Blowout! Firestone's Image Restoration Campaign" Blaney, Benoit, and Brazeal (2002) discuss how Firestone failed in its recovery efforts. The authors claim that Firestone's attempt to shift blame was "poorly conceived." (p. 379) Also, they claim the use of celebrities to support their products and reputation was unsuccessful due to the obvious financial relationships between them. This discussion leads up to the application of Benoit's image restoration theory. (2002). This theory states that "communicators who need to restore damaged reputations have five general rhetorical options: denial, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective action, and mortification." (p.380) The author's conclude that this case study displays "denial and, sadly, concealment of incriminating data, are common responses to wrongful action. Had corrective action been implemented immediately, it seems likely that
References: Blaney, Joseph R., Benoit, William L. & Brazeal, LeAnn M. (2002). Blowout!: Firestone 's image restoration campaign. Public Relations Review, 28, 379-392. Cox, Stephen A. (1999). Group communication and employee turnover: How coworkers encourage peers to voluntarily exit. The Southern Communication Journal, 64, 181-192. Wagoner, Ruth & Waldron, Vincent R. (1999). How supervisors convey routine bad news: Facework at UPS. The Southern Communication Journal, 64, 193-209. Guiniven, John E. (2002). Dealing with activism in Canada: an ideal cultural fit for the two-way symmetrical public relations model. Public Relations Review, 28, 393-402. Benoit, William L. (1998). Bill Clinton in the Starr chamber. American Communications Journal. 12, (2). retrieved from http://acjournal.org/holdings/vol2/iss2/editorials, Apr. 21 2005.