Textbook Chapter 10

Chapter 10 sheds light on issues and crisis management in public relations practice. As organisations function in an open environment, they have to be responsive to changing opinions and expectations from the public. Thus, it is important for public relations practitioners to be well-versed in issues and crisis management so that they can deal with such matters effectively.

As mentioned in Chapter 8, a public relations practitioner is responsible for reputation management in the organisation. This chapter gave me more insight on how reputation management is related to public relations. When a public relations practitioner is able to manage a crisis effectively, this helps in salvaging the organisation’s reputation, which may have been damaged when problems arose.

MasterFoods faced a crisis in 2005 when it received extortion letters from an unidentified source, where it threatened to contaminate MasterFood’s food products. As MasterFoods was able to settle the crisis effectively by placing public interest as its priority, it received praise from the public. This even resulted in a reputation enhancement for MasterFoods when it won several best practice awards for its crisis management campaign.

Conversely, poor crisis management can cause substantial damage to an organisation’s reputation. In 2010, Johnson and Johnson’s reputation took a severe beating when it failed to properly manage a product scandal. Several of its drugs had to be pulled off the shelves as people were reported to have suffered adverse effects after consuming them. The root of the problem was traced to contamination during shipping to its distributors. Johnson and Johnson was widely criticised for its slow response to complaints and failure to inform the Food and Drug Administration promptly.

From the above incidents, I feel that it is important to place public interest as a priority in issues and crisis management. The public is a primary stakeholder of the organisation. It would be unwise for an organisation to have a poor relationship with the public as it risks damaging its reputation.

In my opinion, public relations practitioners should always be prepared to face crises. In this way, the organisation would be able to respond to problems quickly and effectively to minimise losses.