Corporate crisis planning: tensions, issues, and contradictions

Abstract

Purpose

Crisis planning, which symbolizes an organization's crisis preparedness and often conceptualized at the corporate headquarters, is increasingly decentralized to regional centers of global companies. These centers, in turn, synchronize their crisis master plans with its national units for expeditious management of localized crises. The purpose of this paper is to capture the decision‐making processes that practitioners at a regional center faced as they nurtured their master plan from conception to implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative method is used. This is a case study of a Fortune 500 company with plants in every continent. The company has four regional centers, and the center under study oversees more than 20 national units or countries.

Findings

This study found a deep divide in attitude, expectation, and style between what practitioners and the dominant coalition regarded as necessary and sufficient measures in crisis planning.

Research limitations/implications

Restricted access to more interviewees.

Practical implications

Studies like this, grounded in the practitioner's world, add rich layers of context to understanding how theory and practice can integrate. Given that in this study, corporate communications has been found to be regarded as an auxiliary, rather than ancillary, function in this study, this paper offers practical tips on what practitioners can do to transform organizational perception.

Originality/value

Such studies are rare because of the lack of accessibility to data. Practitioners are hesitant to grant access because of the highly sensitive nature of this topic, for fear of reprisals from their organizations, and an inadvertent revelation of organizational privacy and secrets.

Citation

Pang, A., Cropp, F. and Cameron, G.T. (2006), "Corporate crisis planning: tensions, issues, and contradictions", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 371-389. https://doi.org/10.1108/13632540610714818