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The aim of this exploratory paper is to consider the strategic importance of crisis management and integration of crisis planning with the organisation's strategy processes, in particular the utilisation of scenario planning as a crisis planning activity.

A review of the crisis management literature was undertaken and key issues identified, subsequently strategic aspects of crisis management were developed in the context of scenario planning.

The paper contains a discussion of major factors related to a strategic approach to crisis management and a more proactive approach to building relationships with the media. Particular attention should be given to the roles and responses of the media and agencies acting on behalf of the company, as both should been treated in the same way as other relatively powerful stakeholders. The authors suggest that firms can obtain significant advantages through proactive preparation for major relevant contingencies, and its incorporation into the strategic management process.

This paper brings together the debate on the strategic position of crisis management with scenario planning processes to provide a mechanism for designing, evaluating and managing crisis futures. It should prove useful to managers considering the development of crisis management, especially in a strategic context.

This article aims to explore the tragic nature of crisis and identify managers’ decision-making processes and strategies when they are trapped by events beyond their understanding and control. In this article, the tragic is viewed as the collision of an overdetermined scenario perceived as inevitable, insurmountable and irreparable and the managers' strategies to free themselves from this scenario and divert its trajectory.

We make a crossed literature review between crisis management and Greek tragedy as proposed by scholars in classical literature.

We make two theoretical contributions to the literature on crisis management. First, we articulate a set of research proposals into a model to explain how managers' decisions make the crisis tragic. Second, we enrich the field of crisis management by highlighting strategies in order to avoid them.

We use Greek tragedy, not as a metaphor to characterize the consequences of crises as the authors usually do, but as an analytical lens to explore their inexorable, insurmountable and irremediable nature and the decisions made by managers that would make crises tragic.

When a crisis occurs, do corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities protect organizational reputation by buffering negative effects or do CSR activities intensify negative effects, potentially leading to a worse reputation compared to if the organization had no prior CSR engagement? The authors hypothesize that if a crisis emerges in a domain aligned with an organization’s CSR initiatives (crisis-congruent CSR) backfire effects would arise, adversely affecting the organization’s reputation. Conversely, in cases of incongruence, where the crisis emerges in a domain not aligned with an organization’s previous CSR involvement, a buffering effect would manifest, protecting the organization’s reputation.

The authors conducted an experiment with a 3 (crisis-congruent, crisis-incongruent, and no CSR activities) × 2 (repeated measures) mixed factorial design. In the first scenario, no information was provided concerning a company’s social commitment. Alternatively, participants were exposed to an article illustrating the company’s dedication either to healthcare (crisis-incongruent commitment) or to combating sexism (crisis-congruent commitment). Afterward, participants were presented with a newspaper article addressing allegations of sexism against the company’s CEO.

The findings demonstrate that prior CSR activities have the potential both to serve as a buffer and to cause backfire effects in times of crisis. Domain congruence is the decisive moderator of these effects: Crisis-incongruent CSR activities acted as a buffer, crisis-congruent CSR activities “backfired” and led to more negative perceptions of the company’s reputation.

The study directly contributes to the understanding of CSR effects in crisis communication, while also addressing the often paradoxical and contradictory findings of prior studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore crisis history further. The paper also examines the possible impact of information source on publics’ perceptions. The study seeks to expound on the tenets of the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), particularly the underutilized crisis history component.

The study used a 3 × 3 between-subjects experiment design to examine the effects of crisis history and information source on publics’ crisis emotions, perception of crisis responsibility, control, and organizational reputation. Participants were 174 undergraduate students from a large Southeastern university.

The study’s findings suggest that an organization’s crisis history by the media can increase publics’ perceived organizational control (referred to as personal control) in a crisis situation. However, negative crisis history told by the media can evoke more severe public anger in a crisis. A positive crisis history still could lead to negative perceptions.

The study uses a fictional crisis scenario that may not evoke the same emotions or perceptions as an actual crisis.

Crisis communicators concerned with angry publics should focus less on traditional media relations and more on new media to reach other gatekeepers; or focus more heavily on media strategy since the media is more likely to elicit more anger among publics. Furthermore, a positive crisis history does not give organizations a pass in current crises.

Although the SCCT identifies crisis history as an intensifier of attribution of responsibility, few studies have examined crisis history.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate on specific risk mitigation approach which is known as “scenario approach”. Description of stepwise process of their elaboration, which is worth considering for managers, offers feasible tool not only for company risk management improvement but also for significant enhancement of the quality of company strategic planning. Authors also draw attention to advantages and disadvantages of investment and strategic scenario planning. Theoretical implications of using scenario approaches are exemplified both by the set of investment projects and company strategic planning process where method in question was applied.

As for methods applied which fulfilled research strategies, it is worth mentioning following items: analysis which explores particular parts of methodology of scenario elaboration and application, the way of obtaining information, impact on strategy, working with risks and organizational support of outcomes in company environment; synthesis observing context and natural relation of problems solved which supports research hypotheses formulation; induction generalizing facts acquired from results in companies; deduction to be grounds on which conclusion of this paper was drawn up; abstraction used upon evaluation of case studies; comparison assessing consistency and inconsistency of phenomena and objects; description inevitable for characterization of companies and environment in which they operate; interview collecting information inevitable for the evaluation of the way of working with scenarios and company knowledge standards; modelling was used upon consideration about possible future development of factors observed.

The paper arrived at conclusion, that scenario approach, when used appropriately, may significantly mitigate risk exposure of the company. Conclusions which have been made on selected industrial companies can be extended to other industrial branches. Practical application of scenario planning method confirmed that this approach was superior to deterministic single scenario model. Scenario technique thus compensates for deficiencies and omissions which are inherent in simplistic deterministic model. In cases where an investment scenario planning process proved to be insufficient, the paper refers to more advanced techniques like simulation methods or real options.

Over past ten years practical test of proposed stepwise process of scenarios elaboration was repeatedly tested on approx ten industrial companies during the tenure of Mr Soucek and Mr Špaček in top managerial positions.

This paper offers flexible and feasible toll for scenario elaboration and their further development. Such an approach contributes significantly to the enhancement of company risk management process. Proceedures described were successfully tested in managerial practice by two of authors while holding CEO positions in oil prcessing and pharma business.

This paper does not have direct social implication. But scenario approach as a powerful tool of risk management process may significantly contribute to company survival and thus impact social status all stakeholders concerned. Therefore social implications should be identified rather on the background of the problem.

Notwithstanding some general notion about scenario concept, there is still little evidence that scenario approach is applied in larger extent. It is prevalently due to lack of expertise of respective managers who are obviously puzzled with numerous outcomes to be obtained by this approach. Clearly define procedure of scenarios formation may be conducive to larger exploitation of this approach. Design of the elaboration and application of scenario approach which was proven to be functioning in the practice brings new benefits to risk management exploration.

When companies face a crisis, they sometimes deliver blame-shifting communications, trying to shift blame onto another actor to protect their reputation. While previous research has considered how different features of the message affect its persuasiveness, little is known about whether specific senders can blame more effectively. This paper aims to contribute to research in this domain through an investigation of the sender’s social perception as a critical moderator to the persuasiveness of blame shifting.

The authors conduct four between-subjects scenario experiments to test the research hypotheses. In each experiment, participants are presented with a realistic crisis scenario and the crisis communications delivered by the company. The authors assess the extent to which perceptions of the sender influence the message’s ability to reduce negative word-of-mouth intentions and to increase purchase intentions.

The authors show that blame shifting is more likely to be effective when deployed by senders that are small (Study 1) or have a positive CSR track record (Study 2). Furthermore, The authors find that even large senders can successfully deploy blame shifting if they can benefit from being known for their CSR programs (Study 3). Finally, the authors show that the effect of blame shifting depends on the receiver’s level of concern about the crisis: stakeholders significantly concerned by the crisis reject blame-shifting communications (Study 4).

Further research should examine the impact of information about brand competence on blame-shifting effectiveness. Further research is also needed to explore sender effects for other defensive crisis communication strategies such as denial or the use of excuses or justifications.

The study offers critical information for marketers considering the use of defensive crisis communications strategies such as blame shifting.

The study extends the understanding of how sender effects influence blame-shifting communications. The analysis allows us to clarify why this strategy is effective for certain senders and certain receivers while, for others, it tends to backfire. Blame shifting backfires for large senders unless they can boast a strong CSR record.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) leaves Indian business teetering on the edge of survival. This paper aims to set out to assess the impact of the pandemic shocks on the small and medium business segments in India. The research also explores the strategies that potentially take the segments back to recovery and growth.

The findings draw on the perspectives of academic and business people, and the authors use linear and nonlinear regression modelling under three recovery scenarios to support our arguments.

Evidence suggests that the shocks to business are manifold and the severity of most of the issues will aggravate as the recovery prolongs.

The paper explains the rationale of realistic strategies and compares its effects across potent recoveries. The findings are useful for both academics and business and relates to the strategic decisions that would be taken by small and medium enterprises to expedite recovery from the crisis.

The research is unique in surveying the academics and entrepreneurs about the impact of COVID-19 on Indian business.

This study aims to provide an overview, the state-of-the-art “research fronts”, the emerging themes of investigation and a research agenda of crisis communication for destinations’ image.

This research is conducted with a bibliographic coupling study, complemented with an H-Classic classification and a thematic analysis of the articles included in the four clusters provided by the bibliometric methodology (papers dating from 2017 to 2021, both years included).

Based on the bibliometric analysis, four thematic clusters were identified. Two of these clusters supply the “research fronts”, the most current themes in a scientific field: Cluster 1 addresses communication related to tourists’ safety, and cluster 2 enhances the role of stakeholders’ collaboration to create destinations resilience in crisis communication. The other two clusters highlight emerging themes for future investigation: Cluster 3 focuses on recovery marketing communication strategies for a post-crisis era, and cluster 4 analyses how crisis communication strategies contribute to reduce tourists’ risk perception and boosting travel intention. Finally, a future research agenda is proposed, based on the emerging themes from this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first bibliometric study to analyse crisis communication for destinations’ image (pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis). This study, which covers the most recent academic literature in this field, provides insights of communication strategies from recent crises and disasters within the “research fronts”. Besides, a research agenda useful for future scholar investigation is proposed with its emerging themes. These rising topics and learnings from past events could be used by destination marketing organisations in crisis communication for destination image recovery in the current post-pandemic scenario or in upcoming crises or disasters.

危机和灾难中目的地形象沟通：回顾和未来研究议程

摘要

本研究提供了目的地形象危机沟通的概述、最先进的“研究前沿”、新兴的研究主题以及研究议程。

本文进行了书目耦合研究, 辅以 H-经典分类和对文献计量方法提供的四个集群中包含的文章的主题分析 (论文日期为 2017–2021 年间)。

根据文献计量分析, 确定了四个主题集群。 其中两个集群提供“研究前沿”, 这是科学领域的最新主题：集群 一 解决与游客安全相关的沟通, 集群 二 加强利益相关者合作的作用, 以在危机沟通中创造目的地恢复力。 其他两个集群突出了未来调查的新兴主题：集群 三 侧重于后危机时代的复苏营销传播策略, 集群 四分析危机传播策略如何有助于降低游客的风险感知和提高旅行意愿。最后, 本文提出了基于新兴主题的未来研究议程。

据我们所知, 这是第一个分析了目的地形象的危机传播（危机前、危机和危机后）的, 独特的文献计量研究。该研究涵盖了该领域最新的学术文献, 通过其“研究前沿”提供了有关近期危机和灾难的沟通策略的见解。此外, 本文还提出了具有新兴主题的研究议程。这些新兴话题以及从过去事件中吸取的教训, 可以被目的地营销组织 (DMO) 用来进行灾难沟通, 以便在当前的大流行后情景或未来的危机或灾难中恢复目的地的形象。

Comunicación Para la imagen de destinos en crisis y desastres: revisión y futura agenda de investigación

Resumen

Este estudio proporciona una perspectiva general, los “research fronts”- los temas más actuales de una disciplina científica-, los temas emergentes y una agenda de investigación sobre comunicación de crisis de la imagen de los destinos turísticos.

La investigación está basada en un análisis bibliográfico coupling, complementado con una clasificación h-Classics y un análisis temático de todos los artículos examinados con esta metodología bibliométrica (artículos fechados entre 2017 y 2021, ambos años incluidos).

Con este análisis bibliométrico, se identifican cuatro clusters temáticos. Dos de ellos, presentan los “research fronts”, los temas más vigentes de un campo científico: el cluster 1 se refiere a la comunicación realizada para transmitir el concepto de seguridad a los turistas, y el cluster 2 destaca la relevancia de la colaboración de todos los agentes turísticos para crear resiliencia en los destinos en la comunicación de crisis. Los otros dos clusters recogen los temas emergentes de investigación futura: el cluster 3 se centra en las estrategias de marketing para la época de postcrisis y el cluster 4 analiza cómo la comunicación contribuye a reducir la percepción de riesgo de los turistas y, por tanto, a potenciar su intención de viaje. Por último, el artículo propone una agenda de investigación basada en estos temas emergentes.

Hasta donde tenemos conocimiento, éste es el primer estudio bibliométrico especialmente enfocado a la comunicación de crisis para la imagen de los destinos turísticos (con sus tres etapas, precrisis, crisis y poscrisis). Esta investigación, que analiza la literatura más reciente en este campo, proporciona conocimiento sobre la comunicación de las crisis y desastres más recientes, a través de sus “research fronts”. Asimismo, propone una agenda con nuevos temas que están surgiendo en esta disciplina, útil para futuras investigaciones académicas. Dichos temas, junto con los aprendizajes de incidentes pasados, pueden ser usados por las Organizaciones de Marketing de Destinos (DMO, en sus siglas en inglés) para incorporarlos en su comunicación de crisis destinada a la recuperación de la imagen de los destinos turísticos en el actual escenario post pandemia o en futuras crisis o desastres.

The purpose of this study is to explore how emotions felt by the public during a crisis influenced consumer loyalty intention and negative word-of-mouth (WOM). Considering the context-specific nature of emotions, the existing crisis emotions were further validated in a product consumption situation. Drawing on the theories of attribution and social sharing, a conceptual model, positing that crisis-specific emotions [attribution-independent, external-attribution-dependent (EAD) and internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) emotions] influenced negative WOM through behavioural intention, was constructed and empirically tested.

Data was collected from 240 Vietnamese consumers by using a scenario-based survey related to a fictional milk crisis.

The study findings showed that all but one crisis emotion had negative effects on both WOM and loyalty intention. Of these emotions, EAD and IAD were the strongest predictors of negative WOM and behavioural intention, respectively. It was also found that all crisis emotions significantly affected negative WOM through behavioural intention.

Although some efforts have been made to identify crisis emotions, the validity of the existing scales have not been affirmed in other crises related to product consumption situations. The results of the present study, thus, made contributions by enhancing an understanding of crisis emotions and their impacts on consumer loyalty intention and WOM communications.