Chapter 10: Conflict Management: Dealing with Issues, Risks, and Crises
- Crisis communication: PR influences the course of conflicts to the benefit of the organization and when possible to the benefit of the organizations many constituents
- Strategic Conflict Management
- Strategic: purpose of achieving particular objectives
- Management: planned, deliberate action
- Competition: striving for the same object, position, or prize as others
- Conflict: sharp disagreements or opposition resulting in a direct, overt threat of attack from another entity
- Sense of mission and conviction that:
- your organization’s behavior is honorable and defensible
- your organization is ethical
- your organization’s mission is worthy
- your advocacy of the organization has integrity
- your organization works at creating mutual benefits whenever possible
- PR’s role is reducing conflict or crisis management
- Stance approach determines the strategy
- Threat appraisal- assess the seriousness of the threat and the resources needed to combat it
- Organizational: Do you have the knowledge, time ,finances, and management commitment to combat the threat?
- Situational: How do you assess the severity of the danger to the organization? What effort is required by you?
- It depends approach
- First principle: many factors determine the stance or position of an organization when it comes to dealing with conflict and perceived threats against the organization
- Second principle: public relations stance for dealing with a particular audience or public is dynamic, changes as events unfold.
- These form the contingency theory: factors and forces can influence the stance
- Factors: external threats, industry specific environment, general political/social environment, external public’s characteristics, issue under consideration, general corporate/ organizational characteristics, characteristics of the public relations department, top management characteristics, internal threats, personality characteristics of internal and involved persons, relationship characteristics
- Contingency continuum: possible variables that influence an organization;s response is helpful in understanding inputs into the complex decision-making process
- pure advocacy: hard nosed stance completely disagreeing with arguments or claims
- pure accommodation: agrees with its critics, changes its policies, makes restitution and makes a full apology for its actions
- Conflict management life cycle
- Proactive phase: includes activities and thought processes that can prevent a conflict from arising or getting out of hand
- Environmental scanning- constant reading, listening, and watching of current affairs with an eye to interests
- Issues tracking: more focus and systematic through processes such as daily clipping of news stories
- Issues management: organization makes behavioral changes or creates strategic plans in ways that address emerging issue
- Crisis planning: preparing for the worst
- Strategic Phase
- Risk communication: danger or threats to people are conveyed through personal injuries, health problems or environmental damage
- Conflict-positioning: enable organization to position itself favorably in anticipation of actions
- Crisis management plan: a plan that reduces risk communication efforts
- Reactive Phase
- Crisis communication: implementation of crisis management plan or 24/7 efforts to meet the needs of publics
- Conflict resolution: techniques used to bring heated conflict to favorable resolution
- Litigation PR: communication strategies and publicity efforts in support of legal actions or trials
- Recovery Phase
- Reputation management: systematic research to learn the state or the organization’s reputation and takes steps to improve it
- Image restoration: damage is extreme, strategies try to change image of organization
