I have been working with PR agencies in India for almost 12 years and the last 3 years have been with a leading agency in India. One of their key clients that I handled was on mobile telephony. As is true to the nature of the client, crisis was an everyday issue.

Crisis always led to chaos and chaos to confusion, resulting in numerous phone calls, direction less running around and tension. I wondered why such situations cannot be approached in a more systematic and planned way. While conducting my study with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) UK, I chose Crisis Communication as my personal project. I would like to share with you some of my thoughts and the theories behind it.

Let us first define what is crisis. Crisis as described by Banks K.L. is a, “major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting an organization as well as its public services, products and good name.” It interrupts a normal business transaction and can at its worst threaten the existence of an organization. Not all crisis are alike and the response to different crisis differs at any point. Nevertheless, crisis management regardless of parameters requires strategic action be taken both to avoid and mitigate undesirable developments and to bring about a desirable resolution to the problem (Burnett J 1998).

Crisis management is a continuous effort. It is a strategic issue that looms as one of the most difficult to resolve because of both the additional elements of time pressure, limited control and high uncertainty. Crisis is better when it is averted. Weick (1998) in his “enactment perspective” also focuses on the prevention of error occurrence in an effort to reduce the magnitude of those errors. The anticipatory model of crisis management therefore argues that effective crisis management is prevention oriented because it is hard to cope with a crisis for which one has not prepared. The anticipatory model states that although human error cannot be eliminated in their entirety, it still is our responsibility to engage in prevention efforts that require anticipation of these errors.

Public relations experts are urged to move beyond traditional communication responsibilities and to develop skills in researching the company and industry history

and forecasting potential problems with remote stakeholders. Being prepared requires having self awareness knowledge, realizing one’s vulnerability to crisis and engaging a plan of action that counteracts the risk of crisis (Udwadia and Mitroff 1991). Paying attention to the interactions of human, technological and general management factors are the only way to exacerbate a crisis.

A typical crisis situation comprises of 5 stages as referred by Barton (1993). The initial prodromal stage when the organization is watching for warning signs. The second is the preparation or prevention stage. The third stage is that of containment, the efforts to limit the duration of crisis or keep it from becoming more serious. The fourth stage is that of recovery, the efforts spent in salvaging the situation. The fifth stage is that of learning, the process of evaluation and how to convert the learning as knowledge base for future warning signs.

Some of the best practices involved in a crisis management as enlisted by (Fearn Banks 1996 a) are given below.

* The public relations head should be a part of the top management team. Being a part of the dominant coalition, it helps the PR personnel to be privy to all management decisions. They are aware of the issues from the initial stage which may lead to a crisis situation.

* The programmes are designed to build relationships with all key stakeholders who are ranked and segmented according to importance. The organization should know who its stakeholders are and strive to maintain a strong relationship with them.

* An ongoing public relation plan is developed for each key stakeholder. A continuing dialogue with publics helps to bridge the gulf between an organization and its stakeholders. This is what has been defined by J. Gruning (1992) as ‘excellent communication’.

* A strong network and bonding with the media is essential during a crisis situation.

* An ongoing two way symmetrical crisis communication plan is developed as a response to a crisis. The plan should identify the crisis team, spokesperson, duties and the key talking points.

* The organization maintains a reputation for having an overall ‘open and honest’ policy with publics all the time.

The public relations manager should use their boundary spanning role to provide a contingency plan in case of a crisis situation. Given the public relations manager’s knowledge on communication concepts they need to assume a leadership role to resolve the crisis. Crisis like competition is a phenomenon that public relations managers can plan for and produce strategic responses to minimize adverse effects. Public relations is about an effort to mitigate uncertainty. It can do so by manipulating public behaviour or by being proactive to deal with uncertainty strategically.

Crisis communication is not a stand alone module of communication. It has a boundary spanning role and encompasses organizational variables such as strategy, leadership, training, culture, structure and socio-psychological behaviour of both the organization and their stakeholders on whom crisis creates a greater impact.

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