Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Alexa Dare

Second Advisor

Dr. Carolyn Cunningham

Abstract

As risk is inherent in any profitable or viable business, it can be assumed that at some point an organization may face a crisis stemming from known or unknown risks. As such, it is important for organizations to understand how to respond to crises. Crisis communication really has one simple goal in mind: to minimize the effects of the crisis on the organization’s reputation. William Benoit’s “Image Restoration Theory” and Timothy Coombs’ “Situational Crisis Communication Theory” set a framework for how organizations can respond successfully in crisis situations. Yet much of the contemporary academic theory fails to translate from academic to practical, simply because it has a hard time proactively predicting perceived responsibility. This study incorporates Image Repair Theory into Situational Crisis Communication Theory to form the response strategies but uses Vincent Covello and Peter Sandman’s (2001) public risk perception model to create a possible model for bridging the gap between academic theory and practical crisis response by mapping the potential for perceived responsibility. By mapping the degrees of risk an organization’s business operates within, an organization can have a working response strategy ready for immediate deployment should a crisis occur. The implications of this model could provide a road map for organizations to predict to what extent stakeholders hold them responsible for the crisis and can map their response strategy to an academic response method that has academically shown to be favorable.

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