Second stage development of the Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM) Model in crisis communication: Organizational strategies for crises that require high and low organizational engagements
Abstract
Extending current theories in crisis communication, the authors have developed a moresystemic approach to understanding the role of emotions. The Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM)model is based on a public-based, emotion-driven perspective where different crises aremapped on two continua, the organization’s engagement in the crisis and primary public’scoping strategy. This second-stage testing, representing the fourth in the series, found that ontop of discovering anxiety as a possible default emotion that publics feel in crises in an earlierstudy, the default response organizations embroiled in crises involving hostile takeovers,accidents, natural disasters, CEO retirement, rumor, and psychopathic acts, tend to adopt isqualified rhetoric-mix stance that is full of rhetoric while doing little to reassure the publics.Where possible, organizations should move beyond initial posturing to real action, i.e., from aqualified rhetoric-mix stance to action-based stance, peppered with messages that use what wecall “emo-action language”, language that acknowledges the emotional upheavals the publicsexperience with promises of concurrent action to alleviate their emotional turmoil. Thefindings, while still very much exploratory, suggest theoretical rigor in the model, with roomfor further refinements to generate what Yin (2003) termed “analytic generalization” (p. 33) forthe ICM model.