Crisis Management Communication Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Crisis Management Communication - Case Study Example Timothy Coombs developed a three-phase situational crisis communication theory that has been adopted by organizations to handle the crisis. According to this model, communication during a crisis takes three steps which include the pre-crisis communication approach, crisis management communication and post crisis approaches. In 2010, British Petroleum (BP) experienced one of the major crisis to affect the company when one of its offshore drilling sites leaked, leading to a major spill in the gulf of Mexico. This spillage led to the loss of 11 lives and the loss of millions of gallons of crude oil from the drilling reservoir (Coombs & Holladay, 2001). The spillage affected the reputation of the company as it was exposed to major media scrutiny as their mitigation approaches were under scrutiny. However, with the help of the United States government, the oil spill was contained and the company compensated those who lost their lives in the crisis. In this paper, Coombs situational communication model during the crisis will be used to evaluate the approaches that were adopted during the crisis. The organization’s ability to prepare for the crisis and address the concerns during the crisis will be addressed. At the end of the crisis, the company was left with a tainted image from massive media scrutiny making post-crisis communication approaches essential to determine how the company regained its image (Wolf & Merji, 2013). Pre-crisis communication is an anticipatory approach adopted by organizations to prepare for how to handle the pressures of a crisis and how the crisis may expose them in a bad light. During this phase, early signs of a crisis are evaluated and the company makes frantic efforts to address them and ensure that any challenges that may arise are addressed promptly. Before the BP oil crisis, a breach of cement seals at the bottoms of the wells was noted.