Student
Name: Jing TANG
Student
ID Number: 53306162
1.
Crisis management
A
crisis is any event that brings negative effects in the security, economic,
political, societal, or environmental affairs, especially when they occur
abruptly, with little or no warnig (Wikipedia, 2014). There are many types of crises, including natural disasters,
malevolence, technical breakdowns, human breakdowns, challenges, mega-damage,
organizational misdeeds, workplaces violence and rumors (Wikipedia, 2014). For an organization or
a company, most of these crises are the threats that it does not want to
confront.
In the early days, individuals and communities would lead the response to crisis. However, with the emergence of the modern welfare state and the 20th century trends of globalization, urbanization, large-scale migrations of human population and climate changes, the nature of crises facing nations has increased both in magnitude and complexity
Here are three stage of crisis management. First one is pre-crisis stage. In this period, the potential hazard risk and vulnerabilities can be assessed and steps taken for preventing and mitigating the crisis and preparing for actual occurrence
Why crisis management is so important to an organization or a company? First of all, those crises themselves bring heavily and directly serious consequences to the organization or the company in finical, reputational and many other aspects. Without immediately response, the situation will be worse. Secondly, the credibility and reputation of an organizations or a company is heavily influenced by the perception of their responses during crisis situations (Wikipedia, 2014). This will determine whether the organization can repair its image and win customers back, which is very important for the life and death of a company or an organization.
During a whole process of crisis
management, there are many types of resources that needs to be utilized. We can
classify them into four main types.
First type is relation resources including relationships with media, states and customers. In pre-crisis stage of crisis management, this kind of resources could control potential risk and bad influence before incident happens. For instance, stakeholders’ relations and risks affect scanning, assessing situation, designing tools and systems. During the crisis, relation resources help in making responses. If a company would like to take responsibility and has good relationships with some media person or institutions. These people or institutions may make positive comments on the sense of responsibility. And in the post-crisis stage, good relationships with media also contribute to a lot of news reports when the company does something good for the stakeholders to repair its image.
Second type is technical resources including software and some communication channels, like internal network. This kind of resources could improve the effectiveness and efficiency of dealing with crisis. Technical resources, in post-crisis stage, also contribute to post-learning and knowledge management. For example, the online system, called KIPP Share, which was developed by the Cambridge, Mass., start-up Better Lesson, includes documents and multimedia and was designed to walk the line between high-lighting effective practices and out-and-out recommending them
The next is financial resources, which is a support for all stages. The budget of dealing with crisis may influence the effectiveness and efficiency of dealing with crises. Sanlu scandal in China’s dairy industry in 2008 is a good example. Tainted milk, infant formula, and other food materials sickened nearly 300,000 people and led to the deaths of several infants
Final one is human resources including PR experts, scholars and other professional talents like lawyer, which is very important in all stages. In pre-crisis stage, human resources is very important in selecting crisis management team and spokespersons. In the crisis stage, human resources is critical in assessing types of crisis and using different strategies. And in the post-crisis stage, human resources function in training, assessing effectiveness, shaping images and so on.
Apart from these resources, there are many other kinds of resources which is related to crisis management in certain situations. It is obvious to find that all these resources are very important for crisis management. So how to integrate and utilize these resources is an essential thing for crisis management team to pay attention to. And these resources are so rich and diverse that the relationships among them are really complicated. Hence crisis management team need to improve the ability of managing resources, especially when the public needs fast and accurate informations.
3.
Shift:
higher ability of managing resources
In
the past, resources are limited and simple. Managing resources is not so
difficult. But nowadays crisis management team are required to obtain higher
ability of managing resources due to the complexity and diversity of resources.
3.1 Diverse resources bring difference conflicts
Diverse resources bring difference conflicts. Specifically, for technical resources, diversity of these resources means that crisis management team needs to adapt to latest and maybe totally different types of software, network and applications. In the crisis of Carrefour in 2012, the company did not make full use of those technical resources. When customers made negative comments on Carrefour’s official Weibo, the company did not response quickly via its Weibo and missed the golden time. Partly because Carrefour did not adapt to these new technical communication channels.
As for relation resources, a crisis management team has to deal with different media, states and customers, especially in an international crisis. For example, in the crisis of Malaysia flight, many countries sent SAR teams to seek for the flight and rescue those people. Although the relation resources in this crisis were very rich, the information or reports from different SAR teams made public confused. And various media with different and inaccurate information also increased the difficulty of completing tasks. It is obvious to see that diverse relation resources make conflicts.
And diverse financial policies including different prices or taxes in different countries are required to be paid attention to. In the crisis of laundering in HSBC, dealing with diverse financial policies would confuse crisis management team to make capital flow clear in such an international bank.
Dealing with experts or professionals in different fields is involved in crisis management. Collecting relative experts, discussing with each other and making decisions may waste a lot of time. When many travelers were delayed at the airport in Kunming, the emergency plan was very late and unclear, partly because that different functional departments and management departments did not act in one certain direction or follow the common rules. So how to deal with different members in a crisis is an important topic to solve issues.
A conflict means a process that begins when one party perceives that negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. In the process of crisis management, there are three main kinds of conflicts. First one is process conflicts, which is the conflicts over how work gets done. Relation conflict is based on the interpersonal relationship and almost always dysfunctional. Last one is task conflicts, which is over content and goals. Emotional effort and involvement goes largely unrewarded because people move in restrictive rather than constructive channel. Also conflicts release energy at every level of human affairs- energy that can produce positive and constructive results
First aspect is cross-function, which
involve experts and professionals in different fields into a crisis management
team. This will lead to issue of group identification and ambiguity of
jurisdiction. In a crisis management team, especially those temporary ones, it
is harder to make a clear group identification including the rules, status and
clear tasks and goals when the human resources are diverse and complicated.
Although the common goals may decide the focuses in a crisis management team,
different functional experts may have different opinions. Companies deliberately
avoid virtuoso teams, which are consist of star performers who are handpicked
to play specific, key roles, thinking that the risks are too high. Because it's
tough to keep virtuoso teams together once they achieve their goals-burnout and
the lure of new challenges rapidly winnow the ranks (Fischer & Boynton, 2009) . So if there is no
obvious rules of making decisions or fair rights of speaking, the issue of
ambiguity of jurisdiction may occur and lead to task conflicts.
Secondly, in cross-section situation,
people from different places, organizations and countries may have issue of
language and cultural difference. Although English is very common all around
the world, language differences or obstacles still exist, which leads to not
only relationship conflicts but also process conflicts. In addition to that,
cultural habits will lead to relationship conflicts too. For example, Chinese
are more likely to avoid conflicts or direct competition, while westerners are
more frank and direct in expressing their opinions. This difference will induce
workplace conflicts directly for the reason that Chinese may think westerners
are too aggressive and do care about others’ feelings, while westerners may
think Chinese are too sensitive and like backbite. And diverse relation
resources with states, customers and media in different places or countries
will also affect whether there are external relationship conflicts. In other
words, an organization’s relationships with its environment influence those
individuals and the choices they make (McAllum, 2013) .
Last but not least, differences in
collaborative tools require a crisis management team to learn new knowledge.
Common tools are the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems, networking and e-mail. Basically, crisis management teams need team
members who are good at using these tools. And with the constant updates of these
tools, the team members also need to improve their skills. In this
improvement, there will be some conflicts between original knowledge or habits
and brand-new ones. If the team cannot use those tools efficiently and
effectively, process conflicts may occur because work or tasks cannot be done
smoothly and easily.Thus, resources differences creates a lot of conflicts, which may affect the performance of a crisis management team.
3.2 High
Performance team
As we know, a high performance team can
do more than the same number of individuals, which is usually called synergy.
The improvements by a high performance team include productivity, quality,
responsiveness and creativity. And a high performance team has following
features: 1) clear direction, purpose and goals; 2) talented members; 3) clear
roles and responsibility; 4) effective and efficient operating procedures; 5) constructive
interpersonal and external relationships; 6) recognitions for rewards and
punishments.
Exhibit 1 relationship between conflicts
and high performance teams
From what have mentioned before, those conflicts for the diversity of resources are related to the performance of a crisis management team. Specifically, whether the crisis management team has clear goals, roles, and rewards and punishments is related to group identification and ambiguity of jurisdiction. And task conflicts may happen in a cross-function situation due to the diversity of human resources. Next part about relationship conflicts which is also important for a high performance team. As mentioned before, this kind of conflicts mainly happen in cross-section situation due to cultural differences, language differences and external relationship differences. Last one kind of conflicts which decide whether the crisis management team is a high performance one is process conflict. This is related to the effectiveness and efficiency of operating procedures. From these three conflicts, we can identify the performance of a crisis management team.
3.3 Ability of
managing resources
The analysis above explains the
relationship between conflicts and performance induced by diverse and
complicated resources. For a high performance team, it can reduce these
conflicts and managing those resources very well. So in order to have a good
performance in crisis management like quick responses, satisfied feedbacks from
stakeholders and good images. A good ability of managing those resources and reducing
conflicts consequently is a need for a crisis management team with the development
of international crisis management. And our prediction is that the ability of
managing resources for a crisis management team will be higher due to the
increasing complexity and diversity of resources.
4.
Suggestions
on creating a high-performance crisis management team
Through
the analyses above, solving conflicts in a crisis management team makes
contribution to resources management. So some suggestions on conflicts
resolution may help to create a high-performance crisis management team in
terms of a higher ability of managing resources.
For
task conflicts, the main issues for being a high-performance team are the
shortage of clear roles, direction and reward-punishment systems and the
complexity of dealing with diverse-fields experts in one team. For these clear
accountabilities, roles, goals and reward-punishment systems should be built by
a possibly tough discussion that led by a right, experienced and charismatic
people at very first. This discussion should be task oriented. Although dealing
with diverse experts or talents is hard, we can hardly remove them. Instead,
using better methods or rules at beginning may be the most effective and efficient
ways to integrate human resources. Then, devising and implementing a common
method for resolving conflict is necessary (Weiss & Hughes, 2009) . It is impossible
that there is no task conflicts in a team, especially when the situation of the
crisis is so urgent and complicated, so defining a relative rule or method to
solve conflicts reduce the fierce degree of conflicts and is more efficiently.
As
for relationship conflicts, lacking constructive external and internal
relationship affect the performance of a crisis management team. Building grounded trust, investing in
particular relationships and developing members’ ability will be useful to
accelerate relationship-building process (Edmondson & Smith , 2008) . In a crisis
management team, especially for those temporary ones, building relationship
quickly is very important in creating a foundation of a good relationship. Thus,
basically, building trust by getting to know each other, investing in
particular relationships and developing members’ ability in dealing with crisis
are recommended. And participation-based conflict management system, which recognizes
that there are multiple ways for an organization to achieve its goals and to
manage conflict at interpersonal. This is focusing on relationships and an
underlying assumption that participation has benefits at personal,
organizational and societal levels (McAllum, 2013) . Thus, making full
use of this system to involve external and internal stakeholders contributes to
solve relationship conflicts.
In
terms of process conflicts, using tools to operate effectively and efficiently
is the main concern. For these, a crisis management team should analyze the
current tools in internal environment, collect information on what kinds of
tools are used by its stakeholder and then use the unified, direct and
efficient tools in order to improve external and internal contacts. Apart from
that, a crisis management team should also provide team members training on
latest and unified tools, so that the team can operate more smoothly and keep
private information to some extent. And this opportunity is also useful in terms
of involving and encouraging teammates.
By
solving these conflicts, the crisis management team will have a higher ability
of managing resources, which makes the team performs well.
Reference List
1. Crisis. Retrieved April 26, 2014, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis
2. Government of India. (2006). Crisis Management: From Despair to Hope. New Delhi: Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 4-11.
3. Crisis Management. Retrieved April 26, 2014, from
4. Katie Smith Milway, & Amy Saxton. (2011). The Challenge of Organizational Learning. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 44-49.
5. Alice M. Tybout, & Michelle Roehm. (2009, December). Let the response fit the scandal. Harvard Business Review, 82-88.
6. Gordon L. Lippitt. (1982, June). Managing Conflict in Today's Organization. Training and Development Journal, 66-74.
7. Bill Fischer, & Andy Boynton. (2009, May). Virtuoso Teams. Harvard Business Review, 117-123.
8. Kirstiey McAllum. (2013). Workplace Conflict: Three Paths to Peace. IESE Insight, 48-55.
9. Jeff Weiss, & Jonathan Hughes. (2009, May). Want Collaboration? Accept- and Actively Manage- Conflicts. Harvard Business Review, 93-101.
10. Amy Edmondson, & Diana McLain Smith. (2008). Too Hot to Handle? How to Manage Relationship Conflict. Rotman Magazine, 27-31.
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