Journal Reading Reports
Organizational Communication, BADM6123
Masters of Business Administration
May 3, 2005
Crisis communication is one of the most important and neglected components of organizational communication in today's business world. It is vital that every corporation have contingency plans for emergency situations, both natural and man-made. Studies show that eighty percent of organizations confronted with a major disaster runs out of business within two years.(Hickman & Crandall 1997) Nevertheless, we also know that almost forty percent of all Fortune 1000 companies have an operational crisis management plan in place. (Hickman & Crandall 1997) This paper will examine and evaluate three journals that discuss different aspects and needs for an active crisis plan.
The first journal evaluated comes from an article in Business Horizons named "A Multi-faceted Approach to Crisis Management" that discusses the need for developing many parallel plans before disaster strikes. First and foremost, the article says that a crisis management team must be created for the mere anticipation of possible crisis events in order that recovery and rebuild of the organization may be conducted in an efficient manner. The team should be named and move into action. The first order of business for the new team should be developing worst case scenarios. In order for this next step to happen, the team must establish what business functions are mission critical and necessary for the survival of the organization. They must also understand and plan for the proper technology needed to back up these functions to be in place. After all ...