Coombs, W.T. (2007). Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding. California: Thousand Oaks.

Coombs, W.T. (2007). Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding. California: Thousand Oaks.


Coombs (2007) offers a comprehensive analysis of the crisis management process through the perspective of communication. He emphasizes the role of communication in crisis management and thus, he takes a proactive approach that explores the entire crisis management process. He considers that crisis management is a cyclic, ongoing process that never ends, a process that entails three stages: precrisis, crisis event, and postcrisis.

According to Coombs (2007) crisis management should integrate knowledge from a myriad of areas such as small-group decision making, media relations, environmental scanning, risk assessment, crisis communication, crisis plan development, evaluation methods, and reputation management. Yet, this integration is made difficult because most of the research focuses on one single area such as crisis communication or media relations and ignores a possible convergence of various expertise which will make it easier for a practitioner to manage a crisis effectively. For this reason, Coombs' book offers an integrative framework which aims at simplifying the organization of the crisis management knowledge.

Despite past research studies in crisis management, there is no one accepted definition of what constitutes a crisis although, defining a crisis would indicate the way in which the latter is approached. Coombs (2007) defines a crisis as a “perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes.” Coombs’ definition encompasses various perspectives and traits that previous writers used when they approached crises. Hence, according to Coombs’ definition, a crisis is perceptual and unpredictable. In other words, if stakeholders perceive and define an event as a crisis, regardless of whether an organizations considers the opposite, the crisis management team needs to respond. Moreover, crises are unpredictable but not unexpected because organizations know that crises will befall them one day. Yet the manner in which crises strike and when they strike are hard to predict.
Crisis management, an area which developed from emergency preparedness makes use of four interrelated factors (prevention, preparation, response, and revision) in order to “combat crisis and lessen the actual damage inflicted. “
Prevention, which is also known as mitigation, implies the steps taken by an organization in order to detect the warning signs and prevent crisis from occurring. Prevention is a factor rarely known by the public because issues that were solved and did not develop into a crisis are seldom mediated.
The preparation factor includes the development and testing of the crisis management plan (CMP), “diagnosing of the crisis vulnerabilities, selecting and training a crisis management team (CMT) , creating a crisis portfolio, and refining a crisis communication system.” The application of the CMP either in actuality or as in an exercise fall under the response factor along with the recovery or the business continuity –the efforts employed in order to restore operations to normal and help the organization return to its regular operations.
The fourth crisis factor is revision and it refers to the evaluation of what the organization and the CMT did well during real/simulate crises with the purpose of improving the prevention, preparation, and the response efforts. Hence all the factors are linked in a spiral.
The use of the four factor increases the chances of managing crisis which, in turn, can safe lives, preclude loss of sales, limit reputational damage, prevent the development of public policy issues, and save money.
Outline for an ongoing approach for crisis management
The stages approaches in crisis management refer to the fact that each crisis is characterized by a life cycle. Hence, the job of the crisis manager is to perform a segmentation of the crisis and to deal with each discrete segment in a certain order.
For example, Fink (1986) identified four stages in the crisis life cycle: (1) prodromal, hints of a potential crisis begin to emerge, (2) crisis breakout or acute, a triggering event occurs, (3) cronic, the effects of the crisis linger while efforts to clean up the crisis progress, and (4) resolution-the crisis is over and there are clear signs that indicate that the crisis is no longer a concern for stakeholders
Consequently, a crisis does not just happen, it evolves and crisis managers should not just enact a crisis management plan, but rather try to seek out for hints and signs that would indicate that a crisis will befall on the organizations. In other words, they should take a proactive approach every day, scanning for possible issues and risks that, if not resolved, would evolve into crises.
Later on, in 1994, Mitroff divided crisis management into five phases: (1). Signal detection: new crisis signs should be scanned and acted upon in order to preclude a crises, (2) probing and prevention: crisis managers should be aware of the crisis risk factors and work to reduce their potential harm, (3) damage containment: a crisis has hit an organization but the organization members are working to prevent its spread in other parts that have not yet been contaminated, (4) recovery: organization members work to return the organization to its normal activity as soon as possible, (5) learning: organization members review and critique their crisis management efforts, thus adding to the organization’s memory
While the two models entail many similarities and Mitroff’s model (1994) seems to be an extension of Fink’s (1986), the difference between the two lies in Mitroff’s (1994) model aiming at actively identifying crises and engaging into preventing them. Moreover, for Mitroff (1994) a crisis does not end once the normal operations of an organizations are restored: the end of a crisis represents a new beginning of the crisis management process since the crisis will be evaluated and will add to past experiences from which an organization will learn and improve to better cope with future crises.
Additionally, Richardson (1994) divided the crisis management process into: (1) precrisis or predisaster phase, where signs of a crisis appear and people try to eliminate the risk; (2) crisis impact or rescue phase, where the crisis hits and people provide support for those affected or involved in it; and (3) recovery or demise phase, where the organization tries to regain the stakeholders’ support.
Drawing from Mitroff (1994), Fink (1986), and Richardson (1994), Coombs (2007) divided the crisis management process into three macro stages: precrisis (crisis preparation—prodromal signs, signal detection, probong), crisis (the actions taken to cope with the event), and postcrisis (learning and resolution).
The precrisis stage involves: (1) signal detection (crisis managers should identify sources for warning signs) , (2) prevention (issues management, risk aversion, and reputation management) and (3) preparation (CMPs, crisis teams, crisis portofolios).

The crisis event stage starts with a trigger event that marks the beginning of the crisis and entails two substages: (1) crisis recognition (how is the event labeled and accepted, how do you sell a crisis to the top management) (2) crisis containment (the crisis response of the organization, contingency plans and follow-up concerns).
The post crisis stage involves (1) making the organizations better prepared for the next crisis, (2) making sure that stakeholders are left with a positive impression of the organization’s crisis management efforts, and (3) check to make sure that the crisis is truly over.

Prevention: Finding warning signs

In the crisis management literature, the search for warning signs is referred to as signal detection. A crisis can be shunned if appropriate action is taken on the warning signs. Coombs (2007) considers that crisis management must develop a crisis-sensing mechanism, a system designed to scan and monitor for crisis warning signs. The basic element of the crisis-sensing mechanism is scanning, an active search for information. The signal detection includes collecting and analyzing information that may contain warning signs and is composed of three stages: (1) the identification of the sources of information that will be scanned, (2) collecting the information, and (3) the information is evaluated for crisis potential (How likely is the situation to develop into a crisis?)
The signal detection is a process that organizations must enact both internally and externally. The scanning of the environment can be performed with the help of issues management, risk management, and reputational management. Issue management tries to lessen the negative impact of an issue (According to Moore [ 1979] an issue is a trend or condition that, if continued, would have a significant negative effect on how a company is operated). Thus issues management is a proactive approach intended to shape how an issue develops and is resolved. Because certain issues have the potential to develop into crises, issues management contributes to crisis scanning.
On another note, it is harder for the organizations to scan for issues externally because such issues are societal and political and are related to standards of corporate social performance.
Risk assessment identifies risks factors or weaknesses and tries to assess the likelihood that a weakness will be exploited or developed into crises (Levitt, 1977). Some examples of risk factors include personnel, products, the production process, competition, regulation, and customers (Barton, 2001). Yet risk factors are part and parcel of an organization’s everyday life and therefore can never be eliminated completely. Additionally it is important to notice that risk management has more of an internal rather than external focus.
Reputation management plays an important role in the precrisis stage because past research in crisis management showed that a good relationship with the stakeholders increases the chances of an organization to successfully face a crisis. Alsop (2004) asserted that organizations “build up ‘reputational capital’ to tide them over in turbulent times. It’s like opening a saving account for a rainy day. If a crisis strikes…reputation suffers less and rebounds more quickly.”
The relationship history represents the way an organization has treated stakeholders in the past and thus, is a function of whether organizations are meeting or failing to meet the expectations of their stakeholders. Coombs (2004) showed that organizations build favorable relationship histories and reputations by meeting and exceeding stakeholder expectations.
Representative in this respect is the stakeholder theory which posits that an organizations survives or thrives by managing the stakeholders that populate the environment in which the organizations functions. The stakeholders are primary (those people or groups whose actions can be harmful or beneficial to the organization: employees, investors, customers, suppliers, and the government) and secondary stakeholders or influencers (those people or groups who can affect or be affected by the organization: media, activist groups). Unlike the primary stakeholders, the influencers cannot stop an organization from functioning. However they can damage it (Clarkson, 1995).
In sum, issue management, risk management, and reputation management are part of the crisis scanning performed with the purpose of scanning and preventing issues and vulnerabilities form developing into crises.
Crisis preparation
Coombs (2007) stressed the importance for all organizations to prepare for crisis. Crisis preparation should involve: (1) diagnosing vulnerabilities, (2) assessing crisis types, (3) selecting and training a crisis team, (4) selecting and training a spokesperson, (5) developing a crisis management plan (CMP), and (6) reviewing the communication system.
The type of crisis that can befall an organization could be categorized as follows: natural disaster, workplace violence, rumors, malevolence (when an opponent or outsider employs extreme tactics to harm the organization—terrorist acts, product tampering, etc), challenges (the organization is accused by stakeholders that it does not act in an appropriate manner), technical-error accidents, technical-error product harm, human-error product harm, human-error accidents, and organizational misdeeds (when the management takes actions though they are aware that the latter could harm a group of stakeholders). The CMP could be developed in such a way as to address any type of crisis that could strike a specific organization.
The crisis management team (CMT) according to Coombs (2007) should be formed as a cross-functional group, representing each department within the organization such as : marketing, technical. PR, etc, However, apart from their expertise in a certain area, the CMT members should have or be trained to develop skills such as: decision-making and working in a team abilities, listening skills, being able to handle stress, and being able to talk with the media without engaging in verbal aggressiveness.
Crisis recognition; crisis response
The fact that crisis management acknowledge there is a crisis is not enough for the organization to admit to it. Crisis managers need to possess persuasive skills in order to convince the dominant coalition of the potential of the crisis. Hence, they should make use of credibility, emotion, and reason in order to gain the acceptance of the management. It is the way in which crisis managers frame the crisis that helps them gain the management attention and involvement.
Yet, communication not only plays a role in framing the crisis, but also in the way in which the organization responds to it since, the first respond could avoid the spread of the crisis and also reduce the damage the crisis could cause to the organization’s reputation. In this respect, organizations should avoid the “no comment” since passiveness and media avoidance only increase ambiguity. The role of the crisis manager is to make sure that enough information is delivered to the media and the stakeholders and to continuously inform on the developments of the crisis. Certainly, the crisis manager should consult with the legal department so as to avoid statements that may further damage the company and caused later trials.
Coombs (2007) emphasized the distinction between partial apology and full apology. Partial apology refers to a statement that the organization makes in which the latter shows sympathy and understanding for the victims of a crisis, while full apology refers to the organization admitting that its responsibility for what caused the crisis. Hence, it is important to avoid full apology until investigation shows that an organization is indeed guilty for a tragic event. Acknowledging guilt and responsibility prior to final investigations could determine stakeholders to sue the organization.
Throughout a crisis, the CMT needs to informal not only external stakeholders on the latest findings but also its employees since the response needs to be consistent and avoid the creation of the rumors which in turn may affect the credibility of the company.
The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) developed by Coombs (2006) “organizes the response strategies by determining if the intent of the strategy is to change perceptions of the crisis or of the organization in the crisis.” The strategies fall under four clusters: denial posture (attacking the accuser, denial, and scapegoating), diminishing posture (excusing, justification), rebuilding posture (compensation, apology), and bolstering posture (reminding, ingratiation, victimage). The strategies could be employed once the reputational threat is assed by the CMT and posits that, once the reputational threat increases, organizations should use more accommodative strategies.
The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) allows the organization to get back to return to its business as soon as possible. The fact that a crisis is over can be measured by the media coverage dedicated to the organization. The fact that media coverage decreases, is a sign that the crisis comes to an end and that stakeholders received as much information as needed to fill in the blanks caused unknown facts about the crisis such as by who was responsible and what happened.
The postcrisis stage
Coombs(2007) considers that it’s critical for the CMT to evaluate their performance during the crisis while, at the same time, despite the fact that the crisis is over, to continue to perform the two-way communication with their stakeholders with the purpose of keeping them up to date with information about the crisis.
Evaluation is the key to improvement and crisis managers should collect data from media, stakeholders, etc in order to assess their perceptions of the crisis and evaluate what the organization’s strengths and weaknesses were in handling the crisis. Surveys and focus groups can be performed with external and internal stakeholders while media data can be collecting by outsourcing, i.e. the organization could hire a PR measurement company to scan media and new media and determine the results of the crisis management efforts.
The evaluation of the crisis will allow for new changes in the crisis management plan and team that aim at better preparedness for the next crisis that may strike and thus, crisis management is a cyclical, ongoing process that should never end. If organizations view crisis management from this perspective and perform scanning for risks and issues on a daily basis, they have higher chances of avoiding a crisis and of building a reputation which will decrease damages caused by future crises.