Sports organizations are increasingly being seen as business entities for providing monetary returns, fame, and success to all sports practitioners. These are nowadays driven by their owners or top executives along the lines of a business organization. Crises have been seen to destroy a thriving organization, which was unthinkable under normal conditions. All crises need to be resolved for the betterment and protection of any organization, sports or non-sports.
Therefore, effective and strategic management of crises is a key requirement for tackling short and long-term dangers to a sports body and this, in turn, requires effective communication of key information within and outside the organization to its stakeholders. A PR professional can provide his expertise in this area and effectively develop and sustain modern communication systems in a sports organization so that the organization can successfully tide over any crisis and risk to its existence, reputation, financials, etc. The tools used are various and stakeholder or ‘public’ to whom appropriate information needs to be communicated is equally diverse.
Adopting one’s strategy based on this and the nature of a particular crisis can solve the sports management’s nightmare during many a crisis and critical problem situations. This paper highlights this very function and role of a PR staff in managing a crisis in a sports organization through his skills in effective communication and modern media management.
Introduction
Public relations specialists are also termed communications specialists. Their effective role in any organization depends on their ability to communicate information whether internally among employees or externally to agencies like the public, media, etc.
This includes sports organizations (industry), which are big businesses like any other big business (Brand, 2001). Sports organizations increasingly need to be strategically managed, particularly during times of crisis, whose outcome depends to a significant extent on speed & kinds of responses, including communication of information by public relations staff in the organization. Cohen (2003) says that effective crisis communication can help raise an organization’s positioning and profit, as well as protecting or even enhancing its reputation. PR professionals effectively help protect the brand image & reputation of their organization, whose intense media scrutiny in times of crisis, can make or break it. Sports organizations are no exception.
Crisis Defined
Different persons define crisis in different ways. Pollock (2002) defines a crisis as an escalating incident that poses a serious threat to the operation, viability, or reputation of an organization. Ruff & Aziz (2003, p 3) define a crisis as “any incident or situation, whether real, rumored or alleged, that can focus negative attention on a company or organization internally, in the media or before key audiences.”
The Institute for Crisis Management defines a business crisis as “any problem or disruption that triggers negative stakeholder reactions, and results in a potentially damaging public scrutiny” (ICM Crisis Report, 2003). The crisis may be of various types and can be naturally caused, e.g. floods, epidemics, etc or it can be man-made e.g. terrorist strike, financial mismanagement, etc Any crisis in any organization, sports or otherwise, requires a crisis management plan which seeks to resolve the crisis, address key issues, and tackle the fallouts impacting or which may impact the organization in future.
Sports Public Relations
Jackson & Lilleker have stated “…at its core, public relations is concerned with organizational communication, which can be unmediated or mediated.” (2004) The Kent State University defines Public Relations as the strategic management of communication and relationships between organizations and their key publics. William F. Arens (2004) defines PR as “the management function that focuses on the relationships and communications that individuals and organizations have with other groups (called public) to create mutual goodwill, Wilcox, Ault, Agee, and Cameron wrote that ” public relations is planned, deliberate, performance-based, in the public interest, use two-way communication, and is a management function” (2000).
More specifically, Stoldt, Dittmore & Branvold defined Sports Public Relations thus, “Sports public relations is a managerial communication-based function designed to identify a sports organization’s key publics, evaluate its relationships with those publics, and foster desirable relationships between the sports organization and those publics” (2006). The same general principles operate in general & sport public relations and a comprehensive definition is still evolving.
Objectives of Crisis Communications
It is a notable and well-established fact that communications are a vital tool for any managerial public relations strategy to be successful. The management of any crisis is very much dependent on quick & appropriate communication of proper information internally or externally to the organization. This is done by the management of different organizations differently. However, the ultimate objectives of each organization in communicating information during times of crisis are more or less the same. These include the following, but these are by no means all-inclusive:
- Plan and execute appropriate response & recovery strategies
- Obtain required support for executing the crisis management plans
- Reduce rumors, address misinformation and convey facts and/or information as desired by management to various stakeholders
- Convey information in time to the organizational decision-makers
- Open and maintain a two-way communication channel with employees and external bodies like share-owners, customers, and other stakeholders
- Protect and/or recover the brand image of the organization and nullify or minimize damages to financials, reputation, goodwill, staff relations, etc
- Tackle panic situations, financial crises, bad publicity, etc effectively
- Apply principles of strategic management for achieving corporate goals
Communication Tools/Channels
Various channels or modes are using which a public relations staff in any organization, including a sports organization, can quickly & effectively communicate desired information to internal persons or external entities. In so far as sports crises involve a sports organization or a sportsperson, often a celebrity, a sports crisis invites intense media attention. The most commonly used internal communication tools include daily bulletin board posting, a hotline for employee questions, a special section on the crisis on the company intranet site, daily email updates, special databases for management information, retiree organizations, or club channels, etc.
The commonly employed external communication channels include press conferences, press releases, using the services of a spokesperson to address stakeholders or the media, the internet, advertisements on print and visual media, etc. The choice of communication channels, how the PR staff conveys information, the amount of research and planning behind any particular information message, an emphasis on positive aspects to an issue, etc-all these and more influence the effectiveness of communications during, before & after a crisis. An effective communication plan needs to be prepared in advance, although, this itself is not the sure solution to critical issues behind a crisis.
Perrott (2001) believes “the benefits of developing a crisis media plan include a better understanding of the relationship between operational and communicational issues, the identification of internal and external stakeholders and the development of proactive communications practices and related resources. Bernstein believes that preparing for responses to a crisis is a better way of crisis management than reacting to the same (2001).
He also outlined a ten-step communications strategy for handling crisis (2003), which in order are–Identify communications team, identifies a spokesperson, trains the spokesperson, evolves and implement communication protocol, identifies and understand the ‘audience’, anticipates and assess the crisis, provide key information, determines the communication methods, and if necessary evolve and implement an alternative set of communications based upon an objective assessment of reactions to crisis
Methods of Managing a Crisis
An effective crisis management system necessitates the set up of a media information center, appointment of suitable spokesperson(s), a planned strategy to coordinate media responses so that both short term and long term goals of crisis management are addressed, which includes preventing harm or damage to organizational reputation, share value, etc. Media coverage of the crisis needs to be monitored, feedback provided to higher management, intelligence gathered and responses planned accordingly (Neill, 2000).
The media needs to be community-based and should involve the provision of factual information, etc. Messages communicated by PR staff also need to be positive, clear, continuous, simple, and effective in addressing audience concerns (Hewitt Associates, 2004). Internal communications to employees and managerial persons also need to address the target audience concerns, and, need repetition to assure and convince the staff.
Conclusion
Seeger, Sellnow, and Ulmer (2003) state that crisis communication is an “ongoing process that enables organizations to monitor their environments before or during a crisis, to understand and respond appropriately, to construct a consistent interpretation, and to resolve the crisis and reestablish order”.
In the present business-centered sports environment where sports bodies strive to bring in financial returns and their executive management have adopted modern business management practices, public relations staff need to play a crucial role in resolving crises for protecting and enhancing the sports organization’s interests in the same way that financial organizations resort to risk management practices. Development of channels for communication of information both internal and external to the organization is only a necessary corollary of such use of PR staff.
References
Bernstein, J.L. (2001), Ten Steps of Crisis Communications, Bernstein Communication Inc., USA: Jonathan Bernstein.
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