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Den komplexa krisen – En kvalitativ studie om proaktiv kriskommunikation i en kommun

Beck, Vincent LU and Månsson, Elias LU (2017) SKOK01 20171
Department of Strategic Communication
Abstract
Crises today are a constant threat to organizations and are likely to cause major consequences for the organization, its members and other stakeholders affected by the event. Most of the previous research on crisis communication has focused on the urgent crisis phase and organizations' efforts to restore its reputation. Only recently has research begun to engage in proactive crisis communication where emphasis is placed on creating crisis awareness in order to avoid crises or to reduce their consequences. This study aims to contribute to this field. The study is based on a sensemaking perspective and examines how organizational members look at crisis communication and the impact this view has on the organization's ability to create crisis... (More)
Crises today are a constant threat to organizations and are likely to cause major consequences for the organization, its members and other stakeholders affected by the event. Most of the previous research on crisis communication has focused on the urgent crisis phase and organizations' efforts to restore its reputation. Only recently has research begun to engage in proactive crisis communication where emphasis is placed on creating crisis awareness in order to avoid crises or to reduce their consequences. This study aims to contribute to this field. The study is based on a sensemaking perspective and examines how organizational members look at crisis communication and the impact this view has on the organization's ability to create crisis awareness. Furthermore, the study investigates how organizational members think about proactive crisis communication efforts and how they practically work with these efforts. Empirical data collected through qualitative interviews with organizational members in a municipality forms the basis for the analysis that shows that respondents largely regard crises and crisis communication from an information-oriented perspective. The analysis also shows that the communications department has a vision that all members of the organization should be aware of the importance of crisis communication, but that the actual work of anchoring crisis communication is limited to individual key employees. This we see becomes problematic when the responsibility for creating a crisis-conscious organization is laid on the individual, who rarely actively seek understanding of crisis communication work. However, there are indications that the municipality is partly engaged in proactive crisis communication work, but the reasoning behind this work shows that it is characterized by personal perceptions rather than collectively created meaning. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Beck, Vincent LU and Månsson, Elias LU
supervisor
organization
course
SKOK01 20171
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
Kriskommunikation, Proaktiv, Förberedelse, Meningsskapande, Kommun, Intervjuer, Krismedvetenhet
language
Swedish
id
8911388
date added to LUP
2017-06-12 15:43:56
date last changed
2017-06-12 15:43:56
@misc{8911388,
  abstract     = {{Crises today are a constant threat to organizations and are likely to cause major consequences for the organization, its members and other stakeholders affected by the event. Most of the previous research on crisis communication has focused on the urgent crisis phase and organizations' efforts to restore its reputation. Only recently has research begun to engage in proactive crisis communication where emphasis is placed on creating crisis awareness in order to avoid crises or to reduce their consequences. This study aims to contribute to this field. The study is based on a sensemaking perspective and examines how organizational members look at crisis communication and the impact this view has on the organization's ability to create crisis awareness. Furthermore, the study investigates how organizational members think about proactive crisis communication efforts and how they practically work with these efforts. Empirical data collected through qualitative interviews with organizational members in a municipality forms the basis for the analysis that shows that respondents largely regard crises and crisis communication from an information-oriented perspective. The analysis also shows that the communications department has a vision that all members of the organization should be aware of the importance of crisis communication, but that the actual work of anchoring crisis communication is limited to individual key employees. This we see becomes problematic when the responsibility for creating a crisis-conscious organization is laid on the individual, who rarely actively seek understanding of crisis communication work. However, there are indications that the municipality is partly engaged in proactive crisis communication work, but the reasoning behind this work shows that it is characterized by personal perceptions rather than collectively created meaning.}},
  author       = {{Beck, Vincent and Månsson, Elias}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Den komplexa krisen – En kvalitativ studie om proaktiv kriskommunikation i en kommun}},
  year         = {{2017}},
}