Business and Communication

One morning, you awake to news agencies reporting a major fire threatening your office building. You recall your organization recently practiced its quarterly disaster preparedness exercise, and you are fully aware of what to do in this situation. You know what to do, who to contact, and the location of the alternate office to use in case of an emergency. You are concerned but confident you have a plan in place. You know your role as a key member of the organization's crisis communication team (CMT). You help management by preparing a news release and updating the company's website with factual information on the who, what, when, and where details of the event. You use social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, and traditional media, such as radio and TV, to inform internal stakeholder groups (such as senior leadership, employees, and investors) and external stakeholder groups (such as customers, clients, local officials, and the general public) with an appropriate key message. During times of crisis, the public relations specialist helps management communicate sound, safe, and responsible actions to protect and defend the organization from harm or damage.

Crisis communication is one of the many specialized areas or functions of public relations. This course will specifically focus on using crisis communication to protect and defend a company or organization facing a problem or challenge threatening to harm its brand or reputation. As a sudden and unexpected serious event, a crisis can fall into four categories: acts of God, mechanical problems, human error, and management decision or indecision. On any given day, there can be any number of crises - pandemics, natural disasters, grounded airplanes, stranded cruise ship passengers, or senior government officials or CEOs who are fired or asked to resign following inappropriate behavior, to name a few examples. If you want to learn to become a professional public relations specialist, it is important to have a basic understanding of the important role public relations has in helping guide a company or organization through a crisis or serious event.

This course is designed for practical applications of crisis communication principles. It explains what communication problems look like, how to deal with them, and how to anticipate crises as part of conducting an effective public relations program. It will also explain the role of a crisis communication team and teach you how to write a crisis communication plan. Most importantly, it will emphasize the value and importance of using social media in a crisis communication plan and in marketing. Through cases covered in the course and perhaps your own research or experience, you will gain an appreciation and understanding of the necessity of a well-thought-out crisis communication management system. The overall goal of this course is to help develop your skills and abilities as part of a crisis management team to help develop a credible and tested communication plan to respond effectively to a crisis.

The more complex an organization and its operations, the more active a role management plays. Successful management imposes a degree of order and discipline so that work can be accomplished efficiently, regardless of the size of the organization, how many countries it operates in, or how much of its work is performed virtually.

In this course, you will explore various theories of management throughout history. Learn about early management principles, including Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management theory widely practiced in the industrial age of the 20th century, and the shift to more contemporary, 21st-century approaches to management, which tend to be better-suited to knowledge-based industries. Finally, you will examine management from a global perspective.

Throughout this course, we define managers as people who work with and through other people to accomplish the goals of an organization. One important managerial function we have not yet touched upon is motivation, or the ability to persuade and inspire others to commit to an organization and its goals. A good leader must be a good manager if they wish to get a lot accomplished. To get work done, managers must often foster collaboration between employees so that individuals with different skills from different parts of a company can successfully contribute to projects. The concept of collaboration has evolved into the practice of creating teams comprising specific individuals with complementary skills who gather around a common purpose. This purpose might include accomplishing a specific task, addressing a particular problem, revising an internal company process, etc.

The term team is used so frequently today that the meaning of this concept is often diluted. Still, contemporary companies and organizations rely on the efforts of different kinds of teams. Often, an organization will pull together teams with members scattered over multiple locations – even multiple countries – to bring together the skills and competencies needed to address a significant task. One of the key roles of any manager is to establish a team's goals and purposes and select appropriate team members. From there, the team will more or less independently work to accomplish its purpose under the supervision of a leader, who must organize and manage the team effectively.

What does a successful team look like? Would you be surprised to know that the best teams actually experience conflicts? In fact, conflict can be a productive force capable of generating new ideas and multiple options for consideration. The key is to avoid letting professional conflict spill over into personal relationships, a difficult task without careful study and practice. In this unit, you will look at the different stages of group development to learn how to create a successful team and avoid the common pitfalls of working with a team.