Impact of Past Crises on Current Crisis Communication

By T. Coombs. 2004

568 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous research based on Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) suggests that an organization’s past crises history affects the reputational threat posed by a current crisis when that crisis results from intentional acts by the organization. The study reported on in this article provides a wider test of crisis history to better assess its role in crisis communication. Results from the present investigation showed that a history of similar crises intensified the reputational threat of a current crisis even when the crisis arose from the victimization of the organization or from an accident, rather than from the organization’s intentional acts. The threat to reputation was primarily direct, rather than indirect, through perceived responsibility for the crisis. There was little difference in the perceptions of organizations identified as having had no history of past similar crises versus those for whom no information about past crises was provided. Perception of an organization’s responsibility was negatively correlated with the perceived impact on reputation. Implications for the practice of crisis communication and further development of SCCT are discussed.

Subfields: Communication, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffe46ae35fa5bcf4b491dfa2728bf837cece6c7e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

In Literature and Literary Theory

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Effects of attributed responsibility and response strategies on organizational reputation: A meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory research (2016, background): “Crises can certainly affect organizational reputation negatively (Coombs, 2004, 2007), which subsequently reduces publics’ support for the organization such as consumer switching-brand and positive word-ofmouth behaviors (Coombs, 2007; Coombs & Holladay, 2001; Walsh et al., 2009).”
Emotions Matter in Crisis (2011, background): “Although several studies have focused on various crisis response strategies, which are appropriate to certain crisis situations, Coombs (2006) pointed out that most studies examined crisis response strategies in an organization-based perspective, without enough consideration of the stakeholders’ per”
The Role of Emotional Response during an H1N1 Influenza Pandemic on a College Campus (2013, background): “It is likely that crisis emotions are closely related to the crisis type because characteristics of the crisis, itself, play a major role in shaping attributions of responsibility (Coombs, 2004).”
Examining the Role of Social Media in Effective Crisis Management (2014, methodology): “For crisis origin, a 3-item scale of responsibility developed by Griffin, Babin, and Darden (1992) and applied by Coombs (2004) to crisis communication was used (alpha = .65).”
Assessing tourists' cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to an unethical destination incident (2016, background): “In the crisis literature this is generally defined as the making of negative attribution statements about an assumed culprit (Coombs & Holladay, 2007). Negative WOM has been argued to be particularly harmful to the blamed culprit as it is often the most credible (Smith & Vogt, 1995) and contagious (”