Choosing the Right Words

Abstract

Although crisis management has evolved rapidly over the past decade, the symbolic aspect of crisis management has been ignored. More specifically, little research has examined crisis-response strategies (public statements made after a crisis) to see how these messages can be used to shape public perceptions of the crisis and the organization in crisis. This article synthesizes existing literature to create a list of crisis-response strategies and develops a set of guidelines for appropriate use of a given strategy. The guidelines are based upon Attribution Theory and use the crisis situation and the publics as the factors that help to determine when a crisis-response strategy is appropriate.