Crisis Management : A Qualitative Case Study

One only has to recall a few well-documented incidents such as Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol tampering crisis of the early 198Os, the Exxon Valdez oil disaster of the late 198Os, and the Dow Coming breast implant lawsuits that began in the early l99Os and continue to plague the company today, to recognize one of the emerging challenges in the public relations career field -- crisis management. For an organization, the test of a crisis can literally make or break the company. For public relations, crises present not only a challenge, but also a window of opportunity to assist in proving the effectiveness of the profession. As such, the focus of this thesis is to examine the relationship between crisis management and public relations and how public relations professionals conduct crisis management on a daily basis. Using a purposive sample of five participants and the in-depth interview method, general statements were developed. From these general statements, the issue of internal communications became salient and was examined through an ethnographic study at one of the companies. Based on the results of the research, public relations professionals stressed the importance of having a plan, industry knowledge, internal communications, issues management, and protecting the reputation of the company as vital to their daily crisis management efforts. While the ethnographic study in Company A, uncovered a myriad of problems associated with its internal communications program that could cause complications for the company in the event of a crisis.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH is the author of 'Crisis Management : A Qualitative Case Study', published 1999 under ISBN 9781423545873 and ISBN 1423545877.