Written as a tool for both researchers and communication managers, the Handbook of Crisis Communication is a comprehensive examination of the latest research, methods, and critical issues in crisis communication. Includes in-depth analyses of well-known case studies in crisis communication, from terrorist attacks to Hurricane Katrina Explores the key emerging areas of new technology and global crisis communication Provides a starting point for developing crisis communication as a distinctive field research rather than as a sub-discipline of public relations or corporate communication

Risk communication: the evolution of attempts Risk communication is at once a very new and a very old field of interest. Risk analysis, as Krimsky and Plough (1988:2) point out, dates back at least to the Babylonians in 3200 BC. Cultures have traditionally utilized a host of mecha nisms for anticipating, responding to, and communicating about hazards - as in food avoidance, taboos, stigma of persons and places, myths, migration, etc. Throughout history, trade between places has necessitated labelling of containers to indicate their contents. Seals at sites of the ninth century BC Harappan civilization of South Asia record the owner and/or contents of the containers (Hadden, 1986:3). The Pure Food and Drug Act, the first labelling law with national scope in the United States, was passed in 1906. Common law covering the workplace in a number of countries has traditionally required that employers notify workers about significant dangers that they encounter on the job, an obligation formally extended to chronic hazards in the OSHA's Hazard Communication regulation of 1983 in the United States. In this sense, risk communication is probably the oldest way of risk manage ment. However, it is only until recently that risk communication has attracted the attention of regulators as an explicit alternative to the by now more common and formal approaches of standard setting, insuring etc. (Baram, 1982).

The history of crisis management shows that companies embark on particular strategies in response to crisis. So why are some companies’ crisis communication strategies successful, while others are not? The purpose of this book is to broaden the existing knowledge of crisis response strategies by focusing on corporate identity as one of the factors that is most likely to influence their choice. Drawing upon insights from the sensemaking and chaos theories, as well as traditional and alternative, non-European, approaches to strategy formation, Olga Bloch contends that there is a reciprocal relationship between corporate identity and crisis response strategies. This relationship is examined on the example of Toyota Motor Corporation’s communication in response to a crisis caused by a series of recalls of its vehicles in 2009-2010.

This volume takes a communications-oriented approach to a wide range of topics encompassing organization, management, political theory and practice, business-government relations, innovation processes, and IT. Offering a balanced, international presentation, it contains authoritative contributions from world-renowned experts representing various disciplines, including administrative law, organizational and political theory, phenomenology, public and business management, educational technology, psychology, and other fields. The book addresses typically neglected subjects such as communicating through humor, drama, film, poetry, fiction, and other creative forms.

This book provides one of the first systematic accounts of how corporations manage risk to workers and consumers. Careful analysis and interviewing in different corporations elicit a portrait of the myriad hazards that currently confront industry, the corporate programs and resources that have emerged since 1970 to respond to this challenge, and factors that have contributed to successes and failures. In-depth studies of the Volvo Car Corporation, Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, Union Carbide's Bhopal facility, and large chemical and pharmaceutical corporations provide a state-of-the-art assessment of the advances and problems inherent today in industrial safety management. Roger E. Kasperson, Jeanne X. Kasperson, and Christoph Hohenemser are senior researchers at Clark University's Center for Technology, Environment, and Development (CENTED). Roger E. Kasperson is Director of CENTED and its Hazard Assessment Group. Jeanne X. Kasperson is Research Librarian at CENTED and Senior Research Associate in Brown University's World Hunger Program. Hohenemser, a professor of physics, directs the Environment, Technology, and Society Program at Clark University. Robert W. Kates, formerly with CENTED, is Director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University. Ola Svenson, of the Department of Psychology at Lund University in Sweden, is a leading researcher in the field of risk perception and decision analysis.

Risk is a popular topic in many sciences - in natural, medical, statistical, engineering, social, economic and legal disciplines. Yet, no single discipline can grasp the full meaning of risk. Investigating risk requires a multidisciplinary approach. The authors, coming from two very different disciplinary traditions, meet this challenge by building bridges between the engineering, the statistical and the social science perspectives. The book provides a comprehensive, accessible and concise guide to risk assessment, management and governance. A basic pillar for the book is the risk governance framework proposed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC). This framework offers a comprehensive means of integrating risk identification, assessment, management and communication. The authors develop and explain new insights and add substance to the various elements of the framework. The theoretical analysis is illustrated by several examples from different areas of applications.