Communication and Organizational Crisis

(Hardback)

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Crisis events are increasingly common. Their impacts are greaterand they are more widely reported in the mediathan ever before. They often symbolize tragedy and loss, but they are also the precipitating factors in radical, rapid, and frequently positive social change. Understanding the complex dynamics of these powerful events is imperative for both researchers and managers. Taking a broad view of organizational crisis, the authors synthesize a rich and diverse body of theory, research, and practice and apply it to every kind of crisis imaginable, from oil spills to nuclear disasters, airplane crashes, shuttle explosions, and corporate implosions such as Enron. The organization can be anything from a company to a federal bureaucracy or society. Organizational crisis is presented as a natural stage in organizational evolution, creating not only stress and threats but also opportunities for growth and development. Communication is viewed as the pivotal process in the creation and maintenance of organization, and its role is examined here at every stage, from incubation to avoidance, crisis management, and recovery. Researchers, crisis managers, and communications managers will find a wealth of applied theoretical orientations, including chaos theory, sensemaking, organizational learning theory, and more.

Reviews

"Professor Seeger has written an informative and important book that needs to be read widely by anybody interested in crisis."-Ian Mitroff Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy and Professor, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California
The authors, all communications scholars, make an ambitious attempt to summarize, synthesize, and package a huge body of theory and research on organizational crisis, with particular attention to crisis communication. Their volume is a valuable reference tool....The substance is admirable. Recommended. Graduate and research collections.-Choice
"The authors, all communications scholars, make an ambitious attempt to summarize, synthesize, and package a huge body of theory and research on organizational crisis, with particular attention to crisis communication. Their volume is a valuable reference tool....The substance is admirable. Recommended. Graduate and research collections."-Choice

Author Bio

MATTHEW W. SEEGER is Associate Professor of Communication at Wayne State University, Detroit. TIMOTHY L. SELLNOW is Professor of Communication at North Dakota State University, Fargo. ROBERT R. ULMER is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.