Crisis Communication and Reputation Management

Reputational crises have been studied for many years and various constructs have been developed to understand these better. Amongst the more popular constructs is crisis lifecycle theory which seeks to explain the various stages of reputational crises. Developing communication solutions to reputational crises, Benoit and Coombs have each developed strategies. Benoit’s strategy proposes that accounts and apologia provides an effective communication solution, whereas Coombs proposes a methodology to understanding the nature of the crisis to develop a more effective strategy. However case study research and meta analyses of crisis communication literature often finds that extant communication strategies are not entirely effective as most reputational crises are unique. That is to say most reputational crises have different actors who have almost unique motivation and are almost always uniquely impacted by the reputational crises. A review of the main elements of reputational crises finds that most solutions are incomplete, and suggests that the nature of reputational crisis stakeholders is likely to be more informative and important as a reputational crisis cannot exist without stakeholders. This suggests we may need to understand the stakeholders instead of just making statements to them.