COMM411 Study Guide

Unit 5: Ethical PR and Crisis Response

5a. Apply codes of behavior and ethics to specific situations, such as codes that govern privacy rights

What is a code of ethics?
What are the fundamental concepts of the PRSA code of ethics?
Why is it important to follow a code of ethics?

A code of ethics is an agreed-upon set of rules that members of a profession agree to follow as a means to govern right and wrong behaviors. Ethics represent the value system of members of a profession, like public relations. The most common code of ethics for the practice of PR was created by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Practitioners in strategic communication positions follow the code and expect others to do the same. The fundamental concepts in the PRSA code of ethics include:

serve the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for the organization;
adhere to the highest standards of truth and accuracy;
responsibly use specialized knowledge and experience in preparing PR campaigns;
provide objective counsel to the organization;
deal fairly with all publics;
act promptly to correct erroneous information;
do not plagiarize;
do not give or receive gifts that might influence communication transactions;
do not violate intellectual property rights;
do not use deceptive practices; and
avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

The PRSA code of ethics embodies values and common laws. It is essential for public relations professionals to follow a code of ethics to ensure they are providing the best counsel to their clients or employers and promoting a culture of ethical behavior within the organization.

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5b. Apply strategies to effectively address PR challenges and maintain stakeholder relationships

What are the four stages of the issues management process?
What occurs in each of the stages of the issues management process?
What subfunctions of public relations are most related to the issues management process?

PR practitioners engage strategies to help organizations address PR challenges and maintain stakeholder relationships. Issues management is the process of identifying and addressing issues of concern that affect an organization or client. It is a proactive strategy for predicting conflicts and developing strategies to avoid conflict. The issues management process includes four stages: environmental scanning, agenda setting, decision-making, and decision evaluation. In the scanning stage, practitioners may use a SWOT or PEST analysis to identify issues of concern. In the agenda-setting stage, information and research from the scanning stage are used to set the organization's agenda for how they will address issues that were identified. In the decision-making stage, the practitioner counsels organizational leaders about actions they should take to address issues or alleviate issues. In the decision evaluation stage, the organization conducts a debrief to learn from their responses to the issues. The stages of the issues management process mirror those of the RACE model of public relations. The issues management process is most related to crisis management, corporate social responsibility, and community relations.

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5c. Apply skills to identify, assess, and navigate crises effectively to safeguard reputation and maintain stakeholder trust

What is crisis management?
What are the primary types of crises?
What are the eight crisis response tactics?

Crisis management is a subfunction of corporate public relations that involves planning for and reacting to emergencies. There are four primary types of crises: illegal behavior (on the part of the organization), technical breakdowns (such as accidents and recalls), mega-damage events, and human errors, also known as organizational misdeeds (with or without injuries to the public). If a company uses discriminating practices when hiring employees, they are committing illegal behavior. If a company fails to correctly identify ingredients in a food product (like an allergen such as peanuts), this could lead to a recall of the products and is an example of a technical breakdown. If a company is polluting a local water supply with run-off that leaves the community without potable water, they are committing a mega-damage event. If a company executive extorts money from the company, this is an example of an organizational misdeed without injuries.

Eight crisis tactics respond to the public in a crisis: self-enhancement tactics, routine communication tactics, framing the crisis tactics, framing the organization tactics, anti-social tactics, accommodative tactics, excellence/renewal tactics, and inter-organizational relationships. Self-enhancement tactics include using advertisements that acknowledge to the public that the organization has a problem and how the organization plans to make things right. Routine communication tactics directly address stakeholder concerns by discussing the crisis and how it is being managed using owned media such as the annual report. Framing-the-crisis tactics explain the crisis by providing status updates and persuasive accounts that describe the organization's role and what they are doing about the crisis. Framing-the-organization tactics make claims about the character of the organization to minimize the negative effects of the crisis and include ingratiation and organizational promotion. Anti-social tactics are defensive and designed to reduce or shift blame away from the organization. Accommodative tactics use pro-social tactics to admit fault and ask for forgiveness, offering reassurances, eliciting sympathy, and making apologies. Excellence/renewal tactics use pro-social tactics designed to move the organization forward and past the crisis by engaging stakeholders in productive dialog and corporate social responsibility programs. Inter-organizational relationships are tactics that borrow credibility from positively viewed partners or distance the organization from bad actors in the crisis.

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Unit 5 Vocabulary

This vocabulary list includes terms you will need to know to successfully complete the final exam.

accommodative tactic
anti-social tactic
code of ethics
crisis management
excellence/renewal tactic
framing-the-crisis tactic
framing-the-organization tactic
illegal behavior
inter-organizational relationship
issues management
mega-damage event
organizational misdeed
PRSA code of ethics
routine communication tactic
self-enhancement tactic
technical breakdown