Crisis Management -------------Collaborative Shifts and Motives

1.      Introduction

A business crisis can be anything that can negatively affect a company’s reputation or bottom line. In the current day situation no business is immune to crisis. How to deal with public relations where company’s image and pride are at stake is the crucial thing during business crisis. Therefore, crisis management turns to be necessary for any company to handle a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. However, with the development of economy, crisis management has been changed a lot in terms of different kinds of motives. Social media, resources as well as expertise are regarded as the key motives that induce the shifts of crisis management.

2.      Social Media

As Argenti mentioned in his articles, social media is certainly a part of this crisis management and is contributing to the increased media scrutiny present today.

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

Crisis management should be best understood as part of a broad continuum of activities as following stages: Pre-Crisis, Crisis Response, Post-Crisis.

In the past, in the stage of “pre-crisis”, company always has a plan to prevent or lessen the negative outcomes of a crisis and thereby protect the organization, stakeholders from damage. Besides, the news cycle of crisis used to be small, which means it was not very hard to monitor a certain number of media who would cover the crisis and the reaction from public.

In the stage of formulating strategic responses. In the past, organizations had significantly more time to respond to a crisis for the delay of traditional media (newspaper or TV).

In the stage of post-crisis, in the past, companies used to manage the crisis by working with traditional media. But they hardly use traditional media to follow up the situation after the crisis.

Ÿ   Shifts

Social media make crisis hardly to be predictable, which means, it’s tough for company to prepare for every single crisis event. You wouldn’t know which YouTube clips were going to get the most attention or hits and you can’t predict how the media is going to end up covering the crisis. Therefore, crisis management plan is not enough to assess the crisis in real time, now are more companies to crisis management team to handle any crisis. Compared with previous “individual fight”, now CMT forces members to work together with fast pace (Fischer & Boynton, 2005).

On top of that, Owing to social media, savvy companies today not only monitor the social media for crisis but also use these platforms to listen customers concerns and keep people informed, which actually a way to build mutual trust with customers.

In the next stage, with the speed that social media is facilitating, the old rules of thumb like having 24 hours to respond to a crisis are no longer valid. In other words, companies must response to crisis extraordinarily quickly as soon as it comes up.

At last, social media helps customers to reveal the truth of the matter so that people are aware that they are not always very smart about whom they trust, especially many scandals accrue (Kramer, 2009). Also, social media now are widely used to manage post-crisis, like collecting crisis records, stakeholder feedback, in order to reshape their images and rebuild the trust among customers.

3.      Diverse Resources

The resources that needs to be utilized in a crisis management includes relation resources like media and states, technical resources like software and internal network, financial resources and human resources like PR experts, scholars and other professional talents.

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

In the past, when there is no so many resources, the operations and strategies to deal with crisis are very simple and mainly concentrated on the crisis stage.

Ÿ   Shifts

But now those resources are also utilized in pre-crisis stage and post crisis stage. And the process of integrating and utilizing them becomes more complicated in the collaboration in a crisis. Nowadays crisis management team are required to obtain higher ability of managing resources due to the complexity and diversity of resources.

Through three aspects of collaboration in crisis management teams, we can see how these resources lead to those conflicts in details.

First aspect is cross-function, which involve experts and professionals in different fields into a crisis management team. Companies deliberately avoid virtuoso teams, which are consist of star performers who are handpicked to play specific, key roles, thinking that the risks are too high. Because it's tough to keep virtuoso teams together once they achieve their goals-burnout and the lure of new challenges rapidly winnow the ranks (Fischer & Boynton, 2009). If there is no obvious rules of making decisions or fair rights of speaking, the issue of ambiguity of jurisdiction may occur and lead to task conflicts.

Secondly, in cross-section situation, people from different places, organizations and countries may have issue of language and cultural difference. And an organization’s relationships with its environment influence those individuals and the choices they make (McAllum, 2013).

Last but not least, differences in collaborative tools require a crisis management team to learn new knowledge. In this improvement, there will be some conflicts between original knowledge or habits and brand-new ones. If the team cannot use those tools efficiently and effectively, process conflicts may occur.

Thus, resources differences creates a lot of conflicts, which may affect the performance of a crisis management team.

As we know, a high performance team can do more than the same number of individuals, which is usually called synergy. And a high performance team has following features. Those conflicts for the diversity of resources are related to the performance of a crisis management team. For example, whether the crisis management team has clear goals, roles, and rewards and punishments is related to group identification and ambiguity of jurisdiction. And task conflicts may happen in a cross-function situation due to the diversity of human resources.

For a high performance team, it can reduce the conflicts and managing those resources very well. So in order to have a good performance in crisis management like quick responses, satisfied feedbacks from stakeholders and good images, a good ability of managing those resources and reducing conflicts consequently is a need for a crisis management team with the development of international crisis management. And our prediction is that the ability of managing resources for a crisis management team will be higher due to the increasing complexity and diversity of resources.

4.      Expertise

Crisis management concerned a lot about the expertise such as communication skills, psychology knowledge, sociology knowledge, politics knowledge and management knowledge. Apologizing in public is not easy, especially for leaders. (Kellerman, 2006)

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

In the past the expertise used in crisis management is limited such as where is rarely related major and specific department to deal with crisis; they just sent the most talent people who can communicate with public in a better way to manage the crisis.

Ÿ   Shifts

As the crisis management became more and more important in the business and political area, the expertise applied in the crisis management also play a more important role than ever. They must be ready to respond, which means having an executive crisis team at the ready, a contingency budget set aside for crisis response, and – as we’ve outlined – a solid plan for working through the nuances of the specific scandal. (Roehm, 2009)The situation in dealing with crisis has shifted from common sense practice to expertise practice.

First of all, the demand of expertise in dealing with crisis results in the appearance of related majors and research, the birth of Public Relations Company and Consultant Company as  well as the various kinds of related training and lectures.

These changes in crisis management have caused the innovation of collaboration pattern when developing crisis management plan and cooperating with tea members in crisis management.  For example, hiring expert to design tools and systems to detect the crisis, assess the situation and recover from the crisis; Selecting communicate expert who can manage the accuracy and consistency of the delivered messages to be the spokesman; employing psychologists to design the reaction strategy according to people’s different psychological activity in different situations.

5.      Conclusion

It seems that under the influence of these three motives, the shifts of crisis management will still exist and turn out to be both magnitude and complexity in the future.

Reference

1.      Government of India. (2006). Crisis Management: From Despair to Hope. New Delhi: Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 4-11.

2.      Bill Fischer, & Andy Boynton. (2009, May). Virtuoso Teams. Harvard Business Review, 117-123.

3.      Kirstiey McAllum. (2013). Workplace Conflict: Three Paths to Peace. IESE Insight, 48-55.

4.      Alice M. Tybout and Michelle Roehm. (2009, December). Let the Response Fit the Scandal. Harvard Business Review, 82-85.

5.      Barbara Kellerman. (2006, April). When Should a Leader Apologize – and When Not? Harvard business review, 72-81.

6.      Fischer, Bill; Boynton, Andy (2005). Virtuoso Teams. Harvard Business Review. P121

7.      Kramer, Roderick M. (2009). Rethinking Trust. Harvard Business Review. P70

Crisis Management - Collaborative Shifts and Motives

1.      Introduction

A business crisis can be anything that can negatively affect a company’s reputation or bottom line. In the current day situation no business is immune to crisis. How to deal with public relations where company’s image and pride are at stake is the crucial thing during business crisis. Therefore, crisis management turns to be necessary for any company to handle a major event that threatens to harm the organization, the stakeholders, and the general public. However, with the development of economy, crisis management has been changed a lot in terms of different kinds of motives. Social media, resources as well as expertise are regarded as the key motives that induce the shifts of crisis management.

1.      Social Media

As Argenti mentioned in his articles, social media is certainly a part of this crisis management and is contributing to the increased media scrutiny present today.

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

Crisis management actually are consist of broad continuum of stages as follows: Pre-Crisis, Crisis Response, Post-Crisis.

In the past, in the stage of “pre-crisis”, company always has a plan to prevent or lessen the negative outcomes of a crisis and thereby protect the organization, stakeholders from damage. Besides, the news cycle of crisis used to be small, which means it was not very hard to monitor a certain number of media who would cover the crisis and the reaction from public.

In the stage of formulating strategic responses. In the past, organizations had significantly more time to respond to a crisis for the delay of traditional media (newspaper or TV).

In the stage of post-crisis, in the past, companies used to manage the crisis by working with traditional media. But they hardly use traditional media to follow up the situation after the crisis.

Ÿ   Shifts

Social media make crisis hardly to be predictable, which means, it’s tough for company to prepare for every single crisis event. You wouldn’t know which YouTube clips were going to get the most attention or hits and you can’t predict how the media is going to end up covering the crisis. Therefore, crisis management plan is not enough to assess the crisis in real time, now are more companies to crisis management team to handle any crisis.

On top of that, Owing to social media, savvy companies today not only monitor the social media for crisis but also use these platforms to listen customers concerns and keep people informed, which actually a way to build mutual trust with customers.

In the next stage, with the speed that social media is facilitating, the old rules of thumb like having 24 hours to respond to a crisis are no longer valid. In other words, companies must response to crisis extraordinarily quickly as soon as it comes up.

At last, for the characteristics of speed and multiplicity, social media now are widely used to manage post-crisis, like collecting crisis records, stakeholder feedback, especially in reshaping their image and persuade people to go back using their products.

2.      Multiple Resources

The resources that needs to be utilized in a crisis management includes relation resources like media and states, technical resources like software and internal network, financial resources and human resources like PR experts, scholars and other professional talents.

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

In the past, when there is no so many resources, the operations and strategies to deal with crisis are very simple and mainly concentrated on the crisis stage. But now those resources are also utilized in pre-crisis stage and post crisis stage. And the process of integrating and utilizing them becomes more complicated in the collaboration in a crisis.

Ÿ   Shifts

From the three stages of crisis, we can see how the function of integrating and utilizing those resources changes the collaborations in crisis management. In the pre-crisis stage, relation resources will contribute to scanning sources of crisis and assessing situation. And human resources helps selecting crisis management team. In the crisis stage, human resources function well in assessing types of crisis and using different strategies. Technical resources is useful for containing the crisis. Technical resources, financial resources, human resources and relation resources all contribute to managing post-crisis, including post-learning and image repairing.

3.      Expertise

Crisis management concerned a lot about the expertise such as communication skills, psychology knowledge, sociology knowledge, politics knowledge and management knowledge.

Ÿ   Historical Perspective

In the past the expertise used in crisis management is limited such as where is rarely related major and specific department to deal with crisis; they just sent the most talent people who can communicate with public in a better way to manage the crisis.

Ÿ   Shifts

As the crisis management became more and more important in the business and political area, the expertise applied in the crisis management also play a more important role than ever. The situation in dealing with crisis has shifted from common sense practice to expertise practice.

First of all, the demand of expertise in dealing with crisis results in the appearance of related majors and research, the birth of Public Relations Company and Consultant Company as well as the various kinds of related training and lectures.

These changes in crisis management have caused the innovation of collaboration pattern when developing crisis management plan and cooperating with tea members in crisis management.  For example, hiring expert to design tools and systems to detect the crisis, assess the situation and recover from the crisis; Selecting communicate expert who can manage the accuracy and consistency of the delivered messages to be the spokesman; employing psychologists to design the reaction strategy according to people’s different psychological activity in different situations.

4.      Conclusion

It seems that under the influence of these three motives, the shifts of crisis management will still exist and turn out to be both magnitude and complexity in the future.

The Feedback for Comments

 

We have gone through all the comments. We are really grateful to other groups. You are so patient with our blog and video. And it is also very kind for you to give us so many useful suggestions with details.

 

We classify those suggestions into some main parts and we will give some feedbacks according to some important points.

 

1. The products we used to remind people to aware of the problem may be more women-used; it has less effect on men.

Actually, we also care about men’s feeling by providing the picture of Takeshi Kaneshiro and providing a brand, Biotherm, with men line. Maybe we do need to provide other kind of brands which are more familiar to men, like Gough. Although we can add some well-known products which are widely used by all the people, like shampoo, but for leaping bunny this organization, the main product is cosmetic. Hence, we do not want to confuse the audience.

 

2. Audiences are expecting more evidence and specific data about our arguments especially serious consequence about animal experiments. For example, they want to know how many brands still test on animal and some progress this leaping bunny have already make to stop these experiments.

We do think it is a good suggestion because using more data evidence will be more persuasive. Although we already put the list of brands without animal testing in our blog, but we still ignore the positive progress that leaping bunny has made, which is really a good evidence to make Hong Kong people to believe in this organization.

 

3. there is one comment suggest that more information should be given in the last part of video to tell people what they should do for preventing the bunny testing, “such as encourage people not to use cosmetic”.

We agree with that more information should be given to guide audience to do better prevent animal testing, but the suggestion that encourage people not to use cosmetic may be not realistic. And we also consider that if a video is too long, audience may lose patient to go through it. Our main goal is to convey that the issue of animals testing is serious and you can help by choosing a product with leaping bunny’s logo and if you are interested in leaping bunny, you can go to the website.

 

4. Some comments said that the pictures used in our video are too ugly and horrible that maybe people cannot handle it.

We do think using these terrible and cruel pictures can make visual impact on audience, but perhaps we should remind audience of this by saying that the content of the video maybe some kind of ugly and please prepare yourself mentally. And according to one comment, other way to reduce the horrible feeling is to use some drawings instead of real photos. We think it is a kind suggestion, but maybe the outcome or influence will be discounted.

 

5. One comments pointed out that it is difficult to make the video effective in the cultural context of Hong Kong. The audiences want to know where they can find “cruelty-free” cosmetics products in Hong Kong. It was suggested that our group should show some photos of popular cruelty free brands in Hong Kong.

Actually, we think it is a good idea. But given that the length and effectiveness of video, we have to consider more on that suggestion. Maybe giving some logos of Hong Kong brands at the part of “follow our guidance” in the video can be effective.

 

6. People suggested us to elaborate the topic using more logos, such as providing supporting evidence why animal testing can be obsolete and how safe are the cruelty-free products.
We agree with that providing evidence on why animal testing can be obsolete and how safe are the cruelty-free products is a way to be more persuasive. But putting more logos may confused our audience. In fact what we want to promote is just the organization of leaping bunny. But if this assignment is just for the topic, we are pleased to introduce more similar organizations to our audiences.

 

7. Some audience suggest that we can try some personification (e.g. add monologues of animal within the picture) to convey the painful feelings of animals to our audience.

We do like this idea because that will help our audience to empathy with those poor animals, which is more persuasive. This idea will work in concert with well the part of “if we are used in experiments”.

 

Finally, we want to express our thanks again for your attention and suggestions.

 

 

Take a Leap, Shop Compassionately！

 

Leaping Bunny

The Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ (CCIC) Leaping Bunny Program administers a cruelty-free standard and the internationally recognized Leaping Bunny Logo for companies producing cosmetic, personal care, and household products. The Leaping Bunny Program provides the best assurance that no new animal testing is used in any phase of product development by the company, its laboratories, or suppliers.

How leaping bunny works?

Companies certified through the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics' (CCIC) Leaping Bunny Program make a voluntary pledge to eliminate animal testing from all stages of product development. The companies’ ingredient suppliers make the same pledge and the result is a product guaranteed to be 100 percent free of new animal testing. All Leaping Bunny companies must recommit to the program annually and be willing to submit to an independent audit.

Social cause

Animal testing means using non-human animals in experiments). It can be used in research such as genetics, developmental biology, behavioral studies, as well as applied research such as biomedical research, xenotransplantation, drug testing and toxicology tests, including cosmetics testing. Most animals are euthanized after being used in an experiment.

The ethical questions and viewpoints about whether we should conduct animal testing have shifted significantly over the 20th century. The dominant ethical position worldwide is that achievement of scientific and medical goals using animal testing is desirable, so long as animal suffering and use is minimized. While some minority viewpoints exist which said animals had moral rights (animal rights). Tom Regan argues that animals are beings with beliefs and desires, and as such are the "subjects of a life" with moral value and therefore moral rights.

Cosmetics testing on animals are particularly controversial. Such tests, which are still conducted in the U.S., involve general toxicity, eye and skin irritancy, photo toxicity (toxicity triggered by ultraviolet light) and mutagen city.

By 1996, ‘cruelty-free’ shopping had become popular, but it was also confusing, sometimes misleading, and ultimately frustrating. Companies had begun designing their own bunny logos, abiding by their own definition of ‘cruelty-free’ or ‘animal friendly’ without the participation of animal protection groups.

Impact

In response, eight national animal protection groups banded together to form the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC). The CCIC promotes a single comprehensive standard and an internationally recognized Leaping Bunny Logo. We are working with companies to help make shopping for animal-friendly products easier and more trustworthy.

Cosmetics testing are banned in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK. In 2002, after 13 years of discussion, the European Union (EU) agreed to phase in a near-total ban on the sale of animal-tested cosmetics throughout the EU from 2009, and to ban all cosmetics-related animals testing. France, which is home to the world's largest cosmetics company, L'Oreal, has protested the proposed ban by lodging a case at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, asking that the ban be quashed. The ban is also opposed by the European Federation for Cosmetics Ingredients, which represents 70 companies in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy.

 “Animal activists are urging New Zealand to sign on to a global plan to end cosmetic testing on animals. Cruelty Free International says several countries, including China, have already announced non-animal testing.”¹

Workings

Leaping Bunny provides two aspects of services: service for companies and service for service. Companies can apply for this logo. When they pass the review, they can use the logo of leaping bunny to show that they don’t use animal testing in all the steps. For customers, they can choose product without animal testing from the compassionate shopping guide that leaping bunny provided.

Our Vedio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN_KLwOw8PA

Analysis

In our video, we want to persuade Hong Kong people to use cosmetics without animal-testing. To begin with, we have deep thoughts in what rhetorical strategies should we have to do the persuasion. This should be analyzed through three dimensions: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

Ethos, actually, is characteristics we have in persuading people. We considered authority at first, Leaping Bunny Program belongs to CCIC which has wide influence among customers, but we don’t want to use authority to force people, we still believe that Similarity and Empathy which are our advantages can influence people in more friendly and more peaceful ways. Also, we want to establish a common goal - eliminating animal testing from all stages of product development – with cosmetic companies and have a shared vision – protecting animals from testing – with customers.

Besides, there are two dimensions in reflecting our ethos, Assertiveness and Likable/EI. Because we’ve already had wide influence around the world, so we have strong belief that we can affect more and more people to resist animal testing. The assertiveness should be high. At the same time, our good reputation convince customers of trusting the products labeled our logo. The likable/EI characteristic also is high.

Therefore, ethos to some extent influence our decision in logos. First of all, we want to keep our message simple and comprehensive, so that customers will have a deep impression on it and remember it easily. So there are not many sentences in our video. Simple words, profound significance!! Secondly, we use some animal-testing pictures to highlight how cruel for the animals to take these so-called tests. The large numbers of pictures are aim at shocking people by exposing the reality behind thousands of cosmetics. By using Salience, the audience will feel more than ordinary sympathy for the animals, the responsibility of protecting animals will be aroused by these bloody pictures. Furthermore, we put contrast logos in our video, the contrast between human beings’ beautiful life and animals’ painful life. The striking contrast let people know their beauties are at the cost of animal’s short life. Also, the repetition of these pictures double the regrettable feelings of audience. Finally, the most important logos we have is analogies, which imagine human beings are being tested instead of animals. What we try to do is alarming people that animals have the same rights with people, if you feel hurt, animals will have same feelings. Analogies can display a situation that allow people put themselves think for animals and realize the brutality of animal testing, so that they will be persuaded and take action to support animal-friendly products.

In order to make our persuasion communicate to the audience directly and avoid distortion, we also need to know our audience (Pathos), in other words, have deep insight of Hong Kong culture that enable them to have connection with video context.

1. Hong Kong has world-renowned shopping culture and shopping environment. People from all over the world are enthusiastic fashions, jewelries, especially cosmetics. A survey from Nielsen’s revealed that cosmetics are the key actual purchased category (33%) in Hong Kong.

So, at the beginning we put some cosmetics pictures which are familiar to audience in order to guide them into our topics and make the video more acceptable.

2. Star affect is very popular in Hong Kong, intimacy will be created by showing star spokespersons from Hong Kong in our video.

3. Hong Kong's culture was born in a sophisticated fusion of East and West. This situation leads to the diversity of its culture and the people there are open-minded to accept variety. Thus we use inhumane photos to evoke their sympathy. As long as people recognize the severity and ferocity of animal tests, they will accept the definition of “cruelty-free” or “animal friendly” more easily. At the same time, considering the promotion of the freedom of speech in Hong Kong, we believe that our video will be available by many people in a short time and more of them will join us to resist animal testing.

Reference

1. NZ urged to end animal testing. 3News NZ. March 12, 2014

http://www.3news.co.nz/NZ-urged-to-end-animal-testing/tabid/423/articleID/335524/Default.aspx

2. Mathews, Gordon; Lui, Tai-Lok (2001). Consuming Hong Kong. Hong Kong culture and society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

3. Melody Ng (2011). Mainland tourists poised to drive Hong Kong retail economy. The Moodie Report.  

http://www.moodiereport.com/document.php?c_id=6&doc_id=26521

Introduction of our group!

We are “Hit for Brains”! We have two girls-Rose and Ada so far. And we hope new members can join us as soon as possible.

 

 

Rose is a lovely girl with big smile, coming from Shandong Province. She likes cooking, swimming, watching criminal TV plays. Rose who is curious about new field wants to stay in HK and steps into financial industry.  

Ada, who comes from Chongqing, likes movies, music and architecture. The artist she admire most is Leslie Cheung, a famous singer and actor in Hong Kong and Asia. In terms of career, Ada wants to be a HR assistant after graduation and live in HK, the city she loves.
 

Sun Li

We choose “Hit for Brains” as our group name for the meaning of it express our willingness of having brainstorms. “Hit for” stress out intensity and persistence of our group spirit. We believe as long as we keep our brain ticking over, nothing could be barriers to us. In addition, “Hit for Brains” also refers to another target of searching for something special in this class, we want to dig out the core concept of collaboration and spare efforts to achieve that. At last, we want to say, although we don’t have much physical power, our brain power is hitting for you!!!

For us, the main goal in this course is to learn some deep theories in collaboration, reimage the actual circumstances and put the knowledge into practice. And we are eager to make new friends through the cooperation with evening group. 

The topic we like most is negotiation and promoting creative ideas. Just like our name-”Hit for Brains”, we want to experience some interesting shocks through creative ideas. And we also want to know how to handle these shocks in case of the damages which may hurt our feelings and trust.

One myth we have in mind regarding "collaboration" is that every team member gets equal workload. It is a rule in our mind to reflect fairness. 

However, due to the limited time, limited resources and different personalities, some members do more work while others do less work or even nothing. For example, some members may be lazy and think it is unnecessary to work, while other aggressive members tend to take more responsibilities.