In my "week 7" post, I mentioned that PR practitioners need to be forward-looking. Here, in line with issues management and reputation management; PR practitioners need to do so. PR practitioners are not to react to the crisis or issue only when it happens- instead, all this can be planned for on what and how to do when it does happen. PR practitioners need to anticipate all the issues and problems that might come into their way when working for a particular project. Say for example, the recent issue with Toyota having to call back all their vehicles, has the PR practitioner anticipated that this might happen someday? When it happened, what did the PR practitioner do to counter the problem? This is just a simple example of issues that can lead to crises that the PR practitioner needs to deal with.
Ok- I think I'm too fast- Hold it... What is issues management? I forgot to define that. Oops! Well, according to Howell (2009; p. 275), he says that issues management is a "specific management function that seeks to identify potential, emerging, or actual trends, or concerns, or issues likely to affect an organization and its key publics". So the phrase "seeks to identify potential" just equals one word: anticipate.
And how is it different from crisis? A crisis, as Howell (2009) says that it is a major situation that can affect the organization negatively, however its causes are not known. Honestly speaking, I think I got confused with the whole difference between a crisis and an issue. But on the outside, I can say this, an issue is less serious than a crisis is, and crisis happens because the company chooses to ignore issues that it is already facing or because the organization manages the crisis poorly.
In my opinion, for a corporation to manage issues and crisis (when it does happen), the corporation should always strive to be transparent with the public and its employees. That would most likely have issues to come out less serious.
This ends my response for the readings in Week 11.
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