Faculty
Associate professor Alfred Reckendrees

Course Coordinator
Associate professor Alfred Reckendrees

Exams are taken in English

Company crises happen. They may have a long lasting effect on the company’s performance and reputation. Toyota and its problems with brakes and accelerators – and even more irritating explanations by the Toyota management – might result in such a crisis [written 2 Feb. 2010]. From October 2009 until February 2010 not only 6 mio cars have been recalled, but Toyota’s reputation as a high quality producer of very reliable and secure cars has suffered seriously.

Technical problems, accidents, and other unexpected events like this will happen again, and they cannot be excluded by any means. But very often the communicative strategy makes the problems even worse. If the company does not communicate the problems to the public, its employees, its investors, and so on, it is not only responsible for further damages, but the dimension of the crisis may even increase (e.g. Union Carbide and the chemical catastrophe in Bophal, India 1984).

Other company crisis are less attributable to single events; they are very often the result of complex and enduring processes inside of the company (e.g. technical backwardness, wrong products, unsound labour relations, lack of environmental responsibility, poor corporate governance …). And a third group of company crises is related to individual misbehaviour, fraud or other illegal activities (e.g. the Enron scandal and the international dissolution of Arthur Anderson), which might be prevented by ‘good management’. Today we know that all types of crisis should be communicated to different stakeholder groups. The practice is, however, very often different.

This course will provide comprehensive knowledge on the problem of company crises and its communication by evaluating the literature in this new field of research. Based on recent literature the students will discuss systematically general issues of crisis management and communication, which includes a critical discussion of the existing literature that is very often written from a consultancy perspective. The larger part of the course will be concerned with detailed case studies that cover different types of company crisis in different time periods and different cultural environments. This comparative approach is taken to enhance the understanding of the challenges of new communicative technologies, new types of media and different types of e.g. legal systems and industrial relations.

Crisis communication is very often regarded only as public relations; this course looks also at internal crisis communication that is increasingly important for companies with high qualified employees and/or on competitive labour markets. The case studies also include different types of media, such as company journals, press releases and press conferences, web-pages (and, if possible, intranets), blogs, and other new communication channels. If possible, we will follow one company crisis in ‘real’ time during the course.

The company crisis that the course will use as cases are not finally decided, they may include

· AIG (and the subprime crisis)

· Toyota (and the problem of brakes and accelerators)

· Arla (and the company’s communication of the Mohamed cartoons)

· Siemens (part of the management was deeply involved in bribery leading to the demission of the CEO and the president of the supervisory board)

· Merck & Co. (VIOXX®)

The students develop awareness for communicative problems related to different types of company crisis and ‘best practices’ to cope with such a crisis in terms of communication. By studying real life examples (and ‘historical’ examples of communication disasters) they

· will be able to distinguish different types of company crisis and resulting consequences for the communication strategy,

· acquire knowledge on specific communication channels,

Because of the manifold perspective of analysis, the management’s and the different stakeholders’ perspectives, they learn

· how to use different communication channels,

· and also how to ‘deconstruct’ the companies communication practices.

The task of the mini project is to analyse the communication of a specific company crisis with respect to select stakeholders – a case list will be accessible at the beginning of the course.

In order to achieve Grade 12 the students must

· specify and characterize the type of the specific company crisis and

· develop a suitable research strategy and empirical base for the analysis of this specific crisis communication.

· The methodological discussion has to be based on the concepts discussed in the course.

· The case discussion has to be based on the distributed material and on additional material to be provided by the students (e.g. interviews, press releases, press conferences, newspapers, films, web-pages, blogs).

· The mini-project must provide an evaluation of the respective crisis communication and an argumentation why (why not, to which degree …) the company’s crisis communication has been successful or, if the crisis is still going on, a critical discussion of the implications of the communication practice.

· The mini-project has to be written in a comprehensible, precise, structured and logical manner.

In order to submit a final project, students must hand in a one page project-proposal (three weeks before the last lecture) and give one short group presentation on a specific topic/example of crisis communication.

Final exam: Mini-project based on the syllabus and a specific company crisis

A compendium and a compulsory syllabus will be constructed until 15 August 2010; case material will be distributed in class (via sitescape).

Anthonissen, P.F. (2008): Crisis communication. Practical PR strategies for reputation management and company survival, London/Philadelphia: Kogan page

Benoit, W.L. (1995): Accounts, excuses, and apologies. A theory of image restoration strategies, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press

Coombs, W.T. (2007): Ongoing crisis communication. Planning, managing, and responding, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage

Fearn-Banks, K. (2007): Crisis communications. A casebook approach, 3rd ed., Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Gonzalez-Herrero, A./Pratt, C.B. (1996): “An integrated symmetrical model for crisis-communication management”, in: Journal of Public Relations Research, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 79–105.

Gonzalez-Herrero, A./ Smith, S. (2008): “Crisis communications management on the web: How internet-based technologies are changing the way public relations professionals handle business crises, in: Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 143-153

Millar, D.P. / Heath, R.L. (ed.) (2004): Responding to crisis. A rhetorical approach to crisis communication, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Oliver, S.M. (ed.) (2004): Handbook of corporate communication and public relations. Pure and applied, London: Taylor & Francis

Perry, D.C./ Taylor, M./Doerfel M.L. (2003): “Internet-Based Communication in Crisis Management”, in: Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 17, pp. 206-232

Smart, C. / Vertinsky, I. (1984), “Strategy and the Environment: A Study of Corporate Responses to Crisis”, in: Strategic Management Journal, vol. 5, pp. 199-213

Taylor, Maureen/Kent, Michael L. (2007): “Taxonomy of mediated crisis responses”, in: Public Relations Review, vol. 33, pp. 140–146.