CRISIS MANAGEMENT: THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN CRISIS

RESPONSES

Introduction

Webb (2004) argues that the need for crisis management is becoming incredibly important

especially in the new millennium because of the growth in frequency, magnitude and

complexity of disasters over the past several decades. The survival of the organization

depends heavily on what the organization says and does after these disaster hits (Benoit

1997). This brings in PR practitioners, whose job does not only include coordinating who is

saying what, to whom and with what intended effect (Galloway and Kwansah-Aidoo 2005),

but also to be prepared emotionally for it. This annotated biography is divided into two parts:

the study of issues and crisis management in general and the underlying role of emotions in

crisis responses in specific.

An overview to crisis management

First of all, what is crisis?

Crisis, as defined by Norman R. Augustine (2008), are events that are usually painful and

would threaten the existence of an organization. Different people, different writers have

different ways to group crisis scenarios. Harvard Business Essentials (2004), for example,

tries to group crises in types (accidents and natural, health and environmental, etc.) while

Fearn-Banks (2002) groups crises in cases (internal, external, personal, etc.). These attempts

to conceptualized crises is certainly helpful to determined the cause, however understanding

of crisis types is only as useful as knowing the sickness of a patient but unable to prescribed

suitable treatment. Which lead us to the next question which is what crisis management is?

There seems to be a misconception that when talking about crisis management, people think

of the activities that take place after the crisis hit when in fact, crisis management started

even before the crisis come into existence: it is a process comprises of three phrases:

Preparing, Resolving and Learning. Written by Norman R. Augustine, a well accomplished

US businessman in the aerospace industry who served as Under Secretary for the U.S. Army

during the Vietnam War, Pocket Mentor: Managing Crises is a good starter book to

understand crisis management in general as it is short, easy to read, and easy to understand.

The book divides crisis management into a six-stage process: preventing crises (stage 1),

preparing to manage the crises (stage 2), recognizing the crises (stage 3), containing the cries

(stage 4), resolving the crises (stage 5) and learning from crises (stage 6). Though the book

does not specialize in Public Relation, it is good guide as to how to plan forward to minimize

the impact of potential disaster. The limitation of the book lies in the absent of critical

assessment on real case studies which is quite essential for crisis and issue management as

different cases required different approaches and different strategies. Crisis Management in

the New Strategy Landscape in the other hand has a shorter approach and divides crisis

management into a four-stage framework: (i) Landscape survey (anticipating crisis events),

(ii) strategic planning, (iii) crisis management, and finally (iii) applying lessons from crisis to

prevent future reoccurrence (Crandall et al 2010). The book also provides diverse case

studies for each and every chapter which give readers a look at real-world crises and how to

respond to it.

Harvard Business Essentials: Crisis Management by Luecke is another good book which

provides detailed, step-by-step approach an organization can use to prepare and resolve

corporate crises. Its analysis is insightful, well organized, clearly written and well supported

with good case studies from the US. However, it focuses too much on planning for specific

scenarios; it fails to provide insight on more abstract scenarios and unforeseeable

contingencies. Galloway and his coworker Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo at Monash University,

Australia, along with various other contributors studied different case studies in Australia

and published Public Relations Issues and Crisis Management in 2005 which is about

recognizing the potential for crises to occur and the handling of such events in Australia

context. In this book, the outcome of best practice and when best practice is not followed are

compared and contrasted, via which the key principles for each case studies is highlighted for

future application. There is a limitation studying from case studies in these two books

however: the cultural context, the ‘norm’, the practice is different and vary from country to

country, one does not simply use the same strategy taken from a case in the US or Australia

and apply it blindly to another country, especially an Asian country. Despite that, there are

lessons to be learned from this book because modern crises are becoming increasingly global

(Webb 2004).

Crisis communication and the underlying role of emotions

Crisis communication, defined by Fearn-Banks in his book Crisis Communications: A

casebook Approach in 2002, is the ‘ongoing dialogue between the organization and its

publics’ before, during and after the crisis to regain and repair the image and reputation of

the organization (Jin et al 2010). Various studies argued that there are limited strategies for

crisis communication, and using which strategy to apply depends on the situation. Cowden &

Sellnow in his study named Issues advertising as crisis communication: northwest airlines’

use of image restoration strategies during the 1998 pilots’ strike in 2002 argued that

strategies would either (i) denial – deny the crisis; (ii) stall – provide ‘partial, inaccurate, or

delayed information’; or (iii) maintain an open communication channels with the public.

The study An Analytic framework for crisis situations: better responses from a better

understanding of the situation by Coombs in 1998 recommended organization should use a

suitable approach depending on the situation: If they have strong control over the crisis, full

apology is recommended, if they don’t, denial is more suitable. However, Jin, Pang and

Cameron (2010) suggest that denial is rarely used because they would raise suspicion of

wrongdoing or signal acceptance of wrongdoing and organizations don’t usually accept

responsibility in the first place.

Using different approach, Ian I. Mitroff, who is often called the father of modern crisis

management, doesn’t talk about resolving crises or analyzing case studies; he tackles the

fundamental foundation in crisis management – the ‘right attitude’. The book Why some

companies emerge stronger and better from a crisis presents seven essential challenges and

lessons that are key to success in crisis management. The lessons concerns: having the right

heart (emotional IQ - emotional readiness); the right thinking (creative IQ - creative

thinking); the right soul (spiritual IQ - spiritual strength); the right political and social skills

(social and political IQ); the right technical skills (Technical IQ); the right integration

(integrative IQ); and the right transfer (Aesthetic IQ) (Mitroff 2005). Among those 7 lessons

to be learned, I find the first criteria, emotional readiness, especially interesting and I wish to

have a better understanding about it. In his book, emotional readiness is refers to as having

the ‘Right Heart’ (Emotional IQ). It means ‘knowing how to get a better handle on emotions

and how to deal with defense mechanisms that expectedly appear when crises occur’ (Mitroff

2005).

But how do PR practitioners manage their own emotions during disasters? Once the crisis

hit, despite your carefully rehearsed responses as a spokesperson, your face may become red,

pale, or you become extremely sweaty and aggressive. It is not that the plan is badly

prepared, but it is not fully planned for human nature and psychology. In a crisis, ‘anxiety’

tends to be the ‘default’ emotion that everyone experience (Jin 2009; Jin et al. 2007, 2008) so

rather than avoid your emotions, Managing emotions: The missing steps in crisis

communications planning by Lynette M. Loomis place exceptional importance on managing

emotions and use them for a more productive outcome. She provides three steps to manage

emotions: (i) identify and direct your thought, what message is playing in your head? Are

they destructive or constructive? Steer your thought in a positive direction to calm your

physiological reaction; (ii) listen to your body, are they trembling? Do you have nausea or

dry mouth or sweaty palm? Find a way to manage these physical symptom; and finally (iii)

manage your behaviors (Loomis 2008).

Manage your own emotion is just the first step, in crisis communication; PR practitioners

need to aware of what can influence emotions of the public and what emotions can influence.

The study on emotions of the public has taken place for a long time. Agenda setting theory

suggests that the media have strong influence over what the audience thinks about (i.e. what

issue is important) but not our attitude (McCombs & Shaw 1972) while findings from

various framing theory researches suggest that emotional reaction is closely related on how

the message is framed in mass media and it can heavily influence the publics’ emotions

(Entman 1993; Nabi 2003) thus their attitude (Lerner & Tiedens 2006, Tiedens & Linton

2001, Bodenhausen et al 1994). It is also important to understand the public’s emotions when

crises hit in order to know how to respond to it and come up with correspondent strategies,

although the topic of emotions in crisis communication of PR practitioners and publics is

new and was only examined in recent years (Jin & Cameron 2007; Jin et al. 2007, 2008).

Using 259 stories in US newspaper covering five different crisis cases, The role of emotions

in crisis responses: Inaugural test of integrated crisis mapping (ICM) model by Jin, Pang

and Cameron is one research paper among many written on this topic that attempt to gain a

better understanding of the role of emotions in crisis and develop a suitable strategy to

respond. Findings from the above study suggest that emotions are one of the anchors in the

publics’ interpretation of crisis situations and people often experience different combination

of anxiety – anger – sadness – frightened depends on the crises (if it is controllable or

uncontrollable, and if it is predictable or unpredictable) (Jin et al. 2010). Jin (2009) in The

effects of public’s cognitive appraisal of emotions in crises on crisis coping and strategy

assessment suggests excuses strategies can be used against angry publics when the situation

is predictable and controllable, for sad public (predictable yet uncontrollable) it is

recommended that the organization needs to show sincerity and apologize and compensate.

Conclusion

Communication strategies would be ineffective if it fails to touch the hearts and minds of the

public. Emotion play an important role in crisis communication because (i) it gives PR

practitioners hints on how to develop suitable strategies to response to the public and (ii) it

affects the outcomes of crisis communication. PR practitioners, not only do they have to be

prepared emotionally, they also need to be able to assert the common emotion of the public

during crisis and know how to influence the public emotion. Sadly, study on this topic is

scarce, and none provide insight on how to deal with crises in Vietnam context, that is why

my 2nd paper (Reflection report) will try to provide more insight in the importance of

emotion, the role of emotions in developing strategy and how to manage emotion in crisis

responses in Vietnam.

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