Communication, Organization, and Crisis

Communication is increasingly recognized as an important process in organizational crisis and crisis management. The Three Mile Island incident, the Bhopal Union Carbide accident, the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill can all be described as specific, unexpected, and nonroutine events or series of events that created high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization’s high-priority goals. Crises disrupt employees and communities, damage corporate reputations, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Crises also serve as the impetus for investigations and organizational change. This review organizes a dynamic and growing body of communication and organizational literature dealing with crisis, including various developmental approaches used to describe crisis, decision making, public relations, rhetorical approaches, organizational legitimacy, and methodologies for crisis communication research. Research themes and new directions are identified. Weick’s concept of enactment, stakeholder theory, and chaos theory are discussed as frameworks for emerging research directions.