Crisis Management Literature Review

2.0 Literature Review

Crisis management is a process of strategic planning for a crisis or negative turning point, a process that removes some of the risk and uncertainty from the negative occurrence and thereby allows the organization to be in greater control of its own destiny (Fearn-Banks, 2011). One of the aims of crisis management is to plan and provide for possible crisis events which may occur, which is called pre-crisis stage (Heath, 1998). The second aim of crisis management is to reduce or mitigate the impacts of a crisis by improving the response management, which is called crisis (Heath, 1998). The third one is called post-crisis stage, and is to swiftly and effectively determine the damage caused by the crisis (Heath, 1998).

However, many studies indicate that most of crises management relies on communication (Coombs, 2007). Moreover, crisis managers benefit from understanding how crisis communication can be used to protect reputational assets during a crisis. Fortunately, Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) offers a framework for understanding the dynamic (Coombs, 2007). SCCT provides a mechanism for anticipating how stakeholders will react to a crisis in terms of the reputational threat posed by the crisis. Moreover, SCCT projects how people will react to the crisis response strategies used to manage the crisis. Therefore, the research will apply SCCT to develop a crisis communication strategy for maximizing the damage to the corporate reputation during the

The main business in Firm Huan is to customize travel and event plan, the products are the plans. Thus, the product failure in Firm Huan would be the clients do not satisfy with the plans before or after they used the plans, and they want refund. In perceptive of the clients, it would be negligence of staff, or lack of professional skills caused the dissatisfaction. According to the definition (See Table 2.1.1), the situation can be classified into preventable cluster, which human error caused a product to be recalled (Coombs, 2007). Commbs and Holladay (2002) stated that the cluster has very strong attributions of crisis responsibility, and the appropriate crisis response strategy, which it will be introduced in