Hierarchy of Crisis Preparedness within Organisation
The organisation’s Crisis Communication maturity can be described using the Level of Crisis Preparedness table below. The table is adapted from Mitroff and Pearson (1993).
| stage |
Crisis Preparedness Level |
Description of Crisis Communication Preparedness Level
This organisation:
|
|
1
|
Prone to crisis
|
- Has virtually no early warning system in place for detecting major crises.
- Believe that crises rarely occu
- Rarely plan for damage containment before the crisis hits, and recovery systems are not established.
- Do not learn from their past mistakes because they do not conduct formal review sessions.
|
|
2
|
Susceptible to crisis
|
- Represents a decisive advance beyond stage one.
- Although better prepared, are still very vulnerable to a variety of crises.
- Have a comprehensive programme for natural and human-directed disasters of all kind, but are not likely to plan or prepare for other crisis families.
- Plan for neither external economic attacks nor external information attacks.
|
| 3 |
Adjusted to Crisis |
- Have in-depth plans and procedures for a limited number of breakdowns, such as computer malfunction, serious operator errors or major security breaches.
- Justify their actions with rationalisations such as “our size will protect us from a major crisis”, “excellent, well-managed companies do not have crises” and “crisis management is a luxury that we cannot afford”.
- Do not appreciate the complex relationships that will contribute to a crisis.
|
| 4 |
Braced to Crisis |
- Do not represent a definite improvement from the "Adjusted to Crisis" category concerning the Types of Crises identified and the preventive actions. The refinements are found in the management of the phases of the crise
- Has Crisis Communication effort that may be formalised for the earlier, as well as the later phases of the crisis. Thus besides planning for crisis containment, some planning may take place for crisis prevention and detection. As such, the effort is directed towards the proactive mode of CM.
- Has created a Crisis Communication Team, which will bear responsibility for facilitating and formalising Crisis Communication efforts.
|
| 5 |
Prepared to Crisis |
The organisation:
- Has developed plans and procedures that explicitly take into account all the critical systems that prevent major crises.
- Does not see the causes of crises as purely technic
- Is sensitive to human, organisational and staff feedback as w As a result, they are much more likely to have explicit programs that simultaneously address human factor issues.
- Has a greater awareness of the underlying organisational culture and how it contributes, positively as well as negatively, to CM.
|
Mitroff and Pearson argue that Crisis Communication is not equivalent to planning for a crisis scenario, because the latter may be ineffective as it fails to address four major areas of concern. An integrated approach must explicitly and systematically attend to the potential overlaps and interactions of the four major variables of crisis management:
- Types.
- Phases.
- Systems.
- Stakeholders.
It is suggested that by analysing the organisational performance in each of the four major variables, one could establish a hierarchy of five stages of crisis preparedness: crisis susceptible, crisis adjusted, crisis prepared, crisis-prone and crisis braced.
Reference
Goh, M. H. (2015). A Manager's Guide to Implementing Your IT Crisis Communication Plan. Business Continuity Management Specialist Series. Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.
Extracted from "Programme Management"
More Information About Crisis Communication Blended Learning
To know more about our blended learning program and when the next course is scheduled, feel free to contact our friendly course consultant colleagues via sales.ap@bcm-institute.org. They are the BL-CC-3 Blended Learning CC-300 Crisis Communication Implementer and the BL-CC-5 Blended Learning CC-5000 Crisis Communication Expert Implementer.