Understanding what a crisis actually is and managing through a crisis is one of the first steps in crisis management. Of the five implications provided in the textbook regarding defining a crisis, which implication do you believe is the most important and why?
Textbook(s)
Crandall, W., Parnell, J. A., & Spillan, J. E. (2014). Crisis management in the new strategy landscape (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE
The following implications of this definition should be highlighted:
• A crisis is a -low-probability” event. This characteristic makes the planning for a crisis even more troublesome.
Events that are not perceived to be Imminent are hard to plan for. In addition, it is often difficult for management to feed the motivation to plan for such an event.
The notion is,
Why plan for something bad if it may not occur (Spillan & Crandall, 2002). Many managers have asked that same question until they were confronted with a major crisis.
• A crisis can have a high-damage impact. A crisis can devastate an organization, even kill it, or at best, leave it badly wounded.
• The reference to -ambiguity of cause” means that the origins and effects of the crisis might not be known initially. As humans, we instinctively like to point to simple causes.
We especially- seek to look for human stakeholders such as management or company owners who might have contributed to negligence, ultimately causing a crisis.
However, as we have seen throughout this book, multiple interrelated factors can lead to a certain trigger event that can initiate a crisis.
• The ambiguity in this definition also implies that the means of resolving the crisis are often debatable. In other words, several viable options may be for the crisis management team to use in its goal of mitigating the crisis.
• Certain aspects of managing a crisis may require swift decision making. The failure to act decisively during the acute stage of the crisis can often intensify the ordeal.
