Transcript lecture 03

Lecture 03
Communicating Risk
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What is a Crisis?
• “the perception of an unpredictable event
that threatens important expectancies of
stakeholders and can seriously impact an
organization’s performance and generate
negative outcomes” (Coombs, 2007, pp. 2-3).
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Key Aspects of a Crisis
• Unpredictable: can anticipate but not predict
when a crisis will hit.
• Crises violate how constituents expect an
organization to act.
– Violating expectations creates angry constituents
who will alter how they interact with an
organization.
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Key Aspects of a Crisis
• Crisis is a serious threat that can disrupt
organizational operations and/or has the
potential to create negative outcomes.
– Negative outcomes include deaths, injuries,
property damage, negative publicity, reputation
loss, financial loss, and environmental damage
• An organization is in a crisis if key constituents
perceive a crisis.
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Communication Channels
• Web sites should be used.
– Create dark sites
– Separate web site or linked from home page
• Intranets useful for employees.
• Mass notification systems help reach
constituents.
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Communication of Risk
• Very poor public grasp of risk and risk statistics
• Confusion between
relative/absolute/reference/ attributable risk
• Variable perception/tolerance of different
kinds of risk
• Fantasy of a ‘safe drug’
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Perception of Risk
Factors increasing intolerance:
• Involuntary - e.g. exposure to pollution rather than
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voluntary, such as smoking or playing dangerous sports
Unfairly distributed - some benefit whilst other suffer
Inescapable - cannot be avoided by one’s personal actions
Unfamiliar - arising from a novel source
Man-made - from other than natural sources
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Perception of Risk
Factors increasing intolerance:
• Hidden/irreversible - e.g. effects damaging but concealed
for years
• Affects posterity - threatens children, births or future
generations
• Particularly dreadful - e.g. distressing symptoms or social
rejection
• Victims identifiable - e.g. a particular blood type or social
group
• Scientifically obscure - new or rare
• Contradicted - argued by responsible sources
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Problematic issues in drug safety:
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Adverse effects
Risk as a concept in medicine
Benefit-harm
Effectiveness-risk
Public health versus profit
Access to medicines
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Problematic issues in drug safety:
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Individual patient variation and susceptibility
Polypharmacy
Relationship of allopathic and traditional medicines
Resistance
Diagnostic errors
Prescribing errors
Compliance issues
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Risk Factors for Government Officials
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Political expediency
Culture of secrecy
Accountability
Bureaucracy and inertia
Hierarchy
Process versus performance
Complexity
Workload
Corruption
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Elements & Types of Crises
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Elements of a Crisis
Three elements are common to most definitions
of crisis:
(a)a threat to the organization,
(b) the element of surprise,
(c)a short decision time,
(d)a need for change,
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Crisis management
Crisis management consists of:
• Methods used to respond to both the reality
and perception of crises.
• Establishing metrics to define what scenarios
constitute a crisis and should consequently
trigger the necessary response mechanisms.
• Communication that occurs within the
response phase of emergency management
scenarios.
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Crisis Management
The credibility and reputation of organizations
is heavily influenced by the perception of their
responses during crisis situations.
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Crisis Management
* respond to a crisis in a timely fashion makes
for a challenge in businesses.
* must be open and consistent communication
throughout the hierarchy to contribute to a
successful crisis communication process.
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Types of Crises
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Natural disasters
Malevolence
Technical breakdowns
Human breakdowns
Challenges
Mega-damage
Organizational misdeeds
Workplace violence
Rumors
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Crisis Management
Technological crises
- caused by human application of science and
technology
- when technology becomes complex and
coupled and something goes wrong in the
system as a whole (Technological breakdowns)
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Crisis Management
Crises of organizational misdeeds
- when management takes actions it knows will
harm or place stakeholders at risk for harm
without adequate precautions
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Crisis Management
Types of crises of organizational misdeeds:
- crises of skewed management values
- crises of deception
- crises of management misconduct.
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Crisis Management
Crisis management model - Gonzalez-Herrero and Pratt 95
• Successfully diffusing a crisis requires an
understanding of how to handle a crisis –
before it occurs
- issues management
- planning-prevention
- the crisis
- post-crisis
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Contingency Planning
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Plan in advance
Rehearse via simulation
Stipulate who the spokesperson is
Speed and efficiency in response to crisis
Offer accurate information or it will backfire
Plan offers info and guidance to help decision
makers deal with long-term effects of decisions
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Role of apologies in crisis management
• Controversial - for fear of legal outcomes
• Evidence says that a compensation and
sympathy are effective
• True contrition includes sympathy for victims
and offers of compensation to offset losses or
suffering
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Summary
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The nature of crisis
Crisis management model
Planning
Risk assessment
Crisis communications
Learning from experience
Elements of a Crisis
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Thank You
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