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A deliberate and planned crisis communication strategy is an important part of key account management. The purpose of this paper is to draw links between key account managers (KAM) and crisis communication and explore the elements critical to crisis communication in key account relationships.

The approach is qualitative. Data were gathered from people experienced in crisis communication and responsible for strategic accounts. The paper analysed managers’ stories of crisis processes and related communication in relationships.

Successful crisis communication requires an open and active crisis communicator, one willing to solve problems, and also the company being a partner worth trusting and the retention of the relationship being worthwhile for the customer.

The present study focuses on the managerial view, and therefore a dyadic approach is suggested for future studies.

The role of the KAM as a crisis communicator and primary identifier of the crisis is emphasized.

Existing crisis communication discussions have been very media focused. This study focuses on the key account relationship and the related crisis communication. In addition, although earlier studies examine the influences of crises on business relationships (e.g. Salo et al., 2009; Thiessen and Ingenhoff, 2010; Tähtinen and Vaaland, 2006), research on crisis communication in business-to-business key account relationships is still scarce. The results will help to understand the characteristics of crisis communication in key account relationships and enhance communication with strategic accounts.

Purpose – Researchers rarely touch on the phenomenon of crisis in the relationship itself combined with relationship conflict caused by turbulence in the relationship environment – specifically for emerging markets. The aim of this study is to develop a theoretical view for studying how firms manage business relationships when facing crises caused both by involved parties and by contextual factors.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on a business network perspective, the paper develops a relationship view stressing trust/distrust, commitment/de-commitment and uncertainty/knowledge as central explanatory relationship elements. The paper employs longitudinal case study method and discusses how the relationship between the Swedish firm Ericsson and Telefónica in Argentina for the period of 1998–2004. The process view is composed of three phases: the start-up phase, a phase of crisis and instability and finally a phase of restoration.

Findings/originality – With the assumption of extensiveness in relationship development and high risk in falling from conflict into critical problems in emerging markets, the paper has elaborated new theoretical and empirical thoughts. The study gains further strength from the fact that the number and intensity of crises is increasing because of the escalation in global interdependency. It contributes further knowledge on strategy decisions like exit, wait and see, take the risk and advance affecting the firms’ business relationship.

Following industrial network theory, this paper aims to address network behavior from a focal company’s perspective. Special attention is paid to examining the effect of perceptions of the economic crisis on network behavior.

The study is built on a quantitative analysis of an empirical database of 300 companies based on a survey completed in 2013 in Hungary. A focal company network behavior model was developed and applied to investigate the link between variables (valuable customer relationships, valuable supplier relationships, relationship strategy and relational outcomes) and the effect of managers’ perceptions about the intensity of the crisis. To obtain a deeper understanding of the effect of the crisis, structural modeling methodology was applied during data analysis.

How crises are perceived has a moderating influence on companies’ network behavior. In a context in which a crisis is strongly perceived, valuable customer relationships are considered more important than valuable supplier relationships; relationship strategy becomes more intensive; and performance is increasingly focused on operations and less on innovation. The main difference in network behavior is found with the management of the supply side. A different level of attention is paid to supplier relationships in a high crisis-perception context than when a crisis is perceived as being less critical.

Results emphasize the importance of perceptions as a key factor in managerial attitudes, behavior and, ultimately, decision-making. This finding merits more attention from both researchers of business relationships and networks.

From a managerial point of view, the results emphasize the existence of potentially new opportunities in network management. The reinforcement of attention to the customer during a period of crisis implies the importance of the customer orientation, but also suggests that firms may have unexploited opportunities and more potential resources on the supplier side.

The paper combines an analysis of network behavior and perceptions of crisis, helping to explain managerial decisions and attitudes. Analysis was undertaken from a focal firms’ perspective and differences were investigated in attitudes concerning both supplier- and customer-side relations. How crises are perceived is a moderating variable of network behavior.

Adding to the theoretical view of relationship development, this paper holds the view that relationship change encompasses not only smooth incremental change but also includes crises which can trigger relationship weakening, dissolution and/or recovery. The aim is to develop a theoretical view that allows understanding of both smooth incremental and critical changes in the process of relationship development.

Based on a business network perspective, the paper's relationship view holds uncertainty, commitment and trust as central explanatory elements. The process view is composed of three episodes: incremental relationship development; relationship crisis; and ending or survival. The paper employs a longitudinal case study method and discusses how the relationship between the Swedish firm, Ericsson, and its counterpart, Telefónica, develops in the emerging market of Argentina during the period of 1998-2004.

Conclusions demonstrate the vulnerability of relationships due to counterparts' behaviour and network embeddedness. This is a risk of commitment deterioration, and remedial actions like investment in new commitments will reduce distrust and uncertainty. Re-energizing relationships incrementally requires behaviour like waiting strategies, when otherwise the choice is to exit.

Few researchers have combined the findings from stable relationship development studies with the findings from research on crisis into one model handling both stability and instability in business relationships. This is despite the fact that episodes of turbulence and instability are becoming more common in business relationships, due to entrance into more unstable markets, and markets crises of various types.

Anchored on the broaden-and-build theory and the circumplex model, the authors develop and test a conceptual model in which satisfaction, influenced by an effective handling of communication, cooperation, conflict, and opportunism, is set as the predictor of inter-partner creativity in the relationship between hotels and their foreign travel agents under the Covid-19 pandemic.

The conceptual model was tested with data collected from 190 randomly selected hotel units located in Greece, using both online and drop-in questionnaire methods. Data were analyzed using SEM analysis.

Satisfaction with the working relationship was found to be enhanced by improving communication and cooperation, as well as by keeping conflict and opportunism at low levels. This was a strong predictor of inter-partner creativity, although less pronounced under high levels of relational distance and rigidity.

The study should be extended to other country settings, replicated at different levels of crisis severity, and use dyadic data. Additional environmental factors could be used as boundary conditions, while our model could be expanded to include additional drivers and consequences of inter-partner creativity.

To generate inter-partner creativity, there is a need to maintain high levels of satisfaction through proper communication, enhanced cooperation, conflict minimization, and avoidance of opportunistic actions. Also, to better translate satisfaction into inter-partner creativity, interacting parties should keep distance at low levels, while at the same time demonstrate greater flexibility.

The study unveils the role of effectively managing behavioral factors in inter-firm relationships to develop creative solutions to the Covid-19 crisis challenges, an issue neglected by prior research. The study also sheds light on the contingent effects of distance and rigidity, two important factors moderating relationships under crisis. The study applies for the first time two psychological-based theories, the broaden-and-build theory and the circumplex model, to an international marketing crisis situation.

The central aim of this research is to deepen the analysis of the influence that crises have on employee relations by using the stakeholder relationship management model (SRM) to analyze organizational employee relationship management (OERM).

This study uses a questionnaire distributed in two organizations (UK-based public sector and private sector) that were experiencing a crisis at the time of data collection. Respondents identified whether they believed the organization was in crisis, if they defined it as in crisis classified what type of crisis it was, and then responded to questions about their relationship to the organization, the organization's post crisis stability and their own behavioral intentions.

The findings verify the applicability of the SRM in employee relations with three critical findings: (1) employees with higher income in the private sector were significantly less likely to believe their organization was in crisis; (2) the more ambiguous the blame for the crisis, the greater the damage on the relationship between organizations and employees; and (3) collective sensemaking in organizations is essential, but less likely when a crisis has damaged the relationship between employees and organizations.

In the last 40 years of Employee Relations, the role of crisis in influencing OERM has not been meaningfully explored in the journal. Therefore, the piece makes an original contribution.

Data security breaches are an increasingly common and costly problem for organizations, yet there are critical gaps in our understanding of the role of stakeholder relationship management and crisis communication in relation to data breaches. In fact, though there have been some studies focusing on data breaches, little is known about what might constitute a “typical” response to data breaches whether those responses are effective at maintaining the stakeholders' relationship with the organization, their commitment to use the organization after the crisis, or the reputational threat of the crisis. Further, even less is known about the factors most influencing response and outcome evaluation during data breaches.

We identify a “typical” response strategy to data breaches and then evaluate the role of this response in comparison to situation, stakeholder demographics and relationships between stakeholders, the issue and the organization using an experimental design. This experiment focuses on a 2 (type of organization) × 2 (prior knowledge of breach risk) with a control group design.

Findings suggest that rather than employing reactive crisis response messaging the role of public relations should focus on proactive relationship building between organizations and key stakeholders.

For the last several decades much of the field of crisis communication has assumed that in the context of a crisis the response strategy itself would materially help the organization. These data suggest that the field crisis communication may have been making the wrong assumption. In fact, these data suggest that reactive crisis response has little-to-no effect once we consider the relationships between organizations, the issue and stakeholders. The findings show that an ongoing program of crisis capacity building is to an organization's strategic advantage when data security breaches occur.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how several key risk factors, including capital-to-asset ratio (CAR), franchise value and lobbying, affect various measures of risk in the US banking industry before, during and after the financial crisis. The empirical analysis covers the period 2004-2013.

Using recent bank holding company data, this research explores several factors driving risk in the US banking industry. The authors follow recent regulatory models and use a cross-sectional approach that can be employed as a complement to established regulatory bank failure and early warning models to detect and prevent bank crisis and to guide policy intervention over time.

The findings provide evidence that the CAR has a negative relationship with bank risk. The authors also show that banks’ franchise values exhibit a positive relationship with bank risk in non-crisis years and a negative relationship during the crisis. The authors further find evidence suggesting that lobbying decreases bank risk in non-crisis years and increases risk during the crisis.

Previous studies have controversially discussed the effect of factors driving bank risk. The authors contribute to the discussion and provide the first empirical study to analyze the effects of lobbying activities by bank holding companies on bank risk before, during and after the financial crisis.

A well-accepted proposition in the literature of corporate strategic communication and public relations is that consumer-brand relationships (CBRs) affect corporate crisis communication. However, it is inconclusive whether CBRs protect or work against brands, because both buffering effects and love-becomes-hate effects have been found. This study attempts to explain and bridge the seemingly inconsistent findings by clarifying the effects of different types of CBRs in different brand transgressions.

Re-conceptualizing CBRs into non-identifying relationships and identifying relationships, this study examined the possible interaction effects of CBRs and crises on consumers' attitudes and emotions, which then influence their behavioral intentions. A three-step multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data collected from an online experiment with nearly 900 consumers of two brands.

Although non-identifying relationships offer buffering effects, identifying relationships primarily offer love-becomes-hate effects by intensifying negative emotions such as anger and disappointment, which in turn affect consumers' behavioral intentions. Such patterns hold regardless of whether a crisis directly threatens the core meaning of the brand.

This study clarifies the effects of different types of CBRs in crises and shows that deep psychological connections (i.e. identifying relationships) offer love-becomes-hate effects. It suggests that one promising future research direction for crisis communication and public relations scholars is to examine how to mitigate such love-becomes-hate effects so that brands can keep their loyal consumers.

Although a body of studies investigates how networking capabilities (NCs) form and maintain interorganizational relationships that affect firm performance, little is known about this relationship in crisis contexts. This article explores managers' perceptions of environmental uncertainties and how this perception influences NC development and subsequent firm performance, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors used a quantitative research approach to complete this objective, utilizing primary data from a survey of North American firms (N = 212), mostly (62.3%) small- and medium-sized. Data were analyzed via the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The authors found that managers' perception of environmental uncertainties positively impacts the NCs to initiate and develop relationships, which is associated with better firm performance during crises. The capability to initiate and develop relationships supports the firm's access to relevant resources that may be converted into business performance.

By analyzing managers' perceptions of environmental uncertainties and the development of NCs, the study results expand upon previous research by highlighting that starting new relationships and developing existing ones may be an efficient managerial response immediately after a crisis occurs.