Linking Issue Management,Corporate Social Responsibility and Crisis Communication: Applying Balance Theory in Crisis and Issue Management

Through a 2 × 2 × 3 experiment design, this study examines effects of issue‐related corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes on stakeholder perceptions of an issue‐related crisis (i.e., blame, scepticism and corporate credibility) through the lens of balance theory. Results indicate that issue‐related CSR programmes work well in reducing scepticism when stakeholders have high issue involvement and positive attitudes. Scepticism is also found to be a mediator between issue‐related CSR programmes and perceived corporate credibility.     

Key Trends in Database Management Systems — Part 2

The Journal's database management columnist continues the discussion of key trends from the Summer 1999 issue by looking at the impact of gateways, mobile databases, replication, repositories, and very large databases on today's database management systems.     

Crisis Communication in Public Organisations: Dimensions of Crisis Communication Revisited

Research on crisis communication has traditionally focused on private organisations' reputation and blame avoidance strategies. As a result, there is limited knowledge on crisis communication from the perspective of public organisations. This is troublesome as public organisations have substantial responsibilities for preparing, communicating and managing large‐scale crisis events. In order to be able to better conceptualise public organisations' crisis communication, a typology based on communication aims and orientations is introduced. According to the typology, public organisations engage in two dimensions of crisis communication: reputation‐oriented vs. resilience‐oriented and strategic vs. operational. These dimensions are illustrated and discussed by empirical examples from the Queensland floods of 2010/2011. The paper ends with a discussion on how to understand these dimensions of crisis communication in relation to public organisations' priorities, processes and practices.     

Fractal Crises – A New Path for Crisis Theory and Management

This paper is a modest contribution to the vast exploration to be embarked upon as our maps appear increasingly outdated. We will first explore some outmoded ‘taken for granted’ assumptions and visions: this section aims to clarify why the crisis management world has profoundly changed and how the current understanding of crises and theoretical frameworks is becoming increasingly less adequate. Then, we will try to meet the second challenge of this special issue, by suggesting innovative approaches that will contribute to elaborate the building blocks of a theory of crisis management. We will propose a new theoretical framework, through the use of a fractal approach, following the footsteps of Benoit Mandelbrot, in order to rethink and capture the essence of the new theatre of operations that must be dealt with. Throughout, we will show how this original framework could be put into practice and what its limitations and perspectives are.     

Improving Communication in Crisis Management by Evaluating the Relevance of Messages

Efficient communication is a major challenge for emergency responders during crisis management. Reports show that missing information and information overload are important factors that determine the success of crisis management. We propose a method as basis for a software system that improves text or voice‐based communication. Communication is split into segments and the system determines from the content of the communication, the tasks of actors and their locations for which responders in the crisis the information is relevant. The system is tested on data recorded at a fire fighting disaster management exercise and found to be accurate enough to be useful.     

The Kidnapping Crisis in the Philippines 1991–1993: Context and Management

This article examines the increasing incidence of kidnapping in the Philippines between 1991 to 1993. The context of the kidnappings is analysed to demonstrate why they constituted a crisis. The incidence of the crime is investigated with particular reference to who was being kidnapped and to regional variations, theories and facts about the alleged perpetrators being delineated before outlining the various ways in which official agencies, non-governmental organizations and individuals have responded to the crisis. The article concludes with some observations on the possibilities and problems of managing successful responses to such crises.     

Information Problems and Company Behaviour vis‐à‐vis Continuous Management Training

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree and type of information the company holds on training, and to what extent the lack‐of‐information firms suffer in two senses, information on managerial resources and information on training supply, tends to condition their behavior vis‐à‐vis management training. Data from more than 300 Spanish companies with 50 or more workers are used to examine the connection between information asymmetries and company behavior in relation to continuous management training. The empirical study revealed that company readiness to engage in continuous management training appears to be significantly conditioned by all variables related to the existence of information on managers and training supply. Based on these results, underinvestment in managerial training would be associated with those cases in which information is unavailable or not distributed uniformly and transparently. This study contributes to the existing training literature by providing a novel link between information asymmetries (firm managers; firm training offerings) and their ability to influence training investment rates. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Programmable Rewriting Strategies in Haskell: — White Paper —

Programmable rewriting strategies provide a valuable tool for implementing traversal functionality in grammar-driven (or schema-driven) tools. The working Haskell programmer has access to programmable rewriting strategies via two similar options: (i) the Strafunski bundle for generic functional programming and language processing, and (ii) the “Scrap Your Boilerplate” approach to generic functional programming. Basic rewrite steps are encoded as monomorphic functions on datatypes. Rewriting strategies are polymorphic functions composed from appropriate basic strategy combinators.We will briefly review programmable rewriting strategies in Haskell. We will address the following questions:

• What are the merits of Haskellish strategies?

• What is the relation between strategic programming and generic programming?

• What are the challenges for future work on functional strategies?

Facebook and Twitter in Crisis Communication: A Comparative Study of Crisis Communication Professionals and Citizens

This mixed‐methods study presents a comparative analysis of the use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter, among Swedish citizens and crisis communication professionals, as crisis communication tools and information sources. The use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter are not congruent and consistent between the two different groups, according to the overall study. Communication professionals, for example, report higher levels of perceived usefulness regarding Facebook's potential as a crisis communication tool than do the citizens. Taken together, the results show that researchers (within social media and crisis communication) and crisis managers both need to deal with the fact that social media is not a homogenous phenomenon with a single coherent role in crisis management and communication research and practice.     

Did BP Atone for its Transgressions? Expanding Theory on ‘Ethical Apology’ in Crisis Communication

Ethical communication during crisis response is often assessed by external perceptions of the organization's intentions, rather than an assessment of the organization's communicative behaviors. This can easily lead researchers to draw editorial conclusions about an organization's ethics in crisis response rather than accurately describing its communicative behaviors. The case of BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provides a prime example for the importance of accurately assessing the ethical content of an organization's crisis response because the ethics of BP's response have been discussed in news and academic sources; yet little direct examination of the ethical content in BP's response has occurred. The findings have implications for communication ethics, social media engagement, and crisis communication more generally.     

The Designer's Self-Identity — Myths of Creativity and the Management of Teams1

This paper describes recent research conducted at Sheffield Hallam University in which practising designers reported on their experiences of working in a cross functional team. The survey related these experiences to the designers' attitudes to their creativity. Two models for creativity are proposed—one based on the romantic stereotype of the creative genius, the other taking creativity to be an attribute possessed by all human beings in some measure, which can be enhanced by personal effort or by training. Identifying features of cross functional teams which are likely to demand certain personal qualities in designers, the paper notes that these are at odds with the qualities of a ‘romantic-type’ creative person. The link between these qualities, and notions of personality as a set of fixed attributes is pointed out. Several theories of personality which describe mechanisms for change in self identity are described. It is noted that the results of the survey suggest that in many cases designers have a pragmatic attitude to their creativity, despite the prevalence of the romantic stereotype for creativity in the literature of both management and education. Principles are suggested for design education, to enable designers to re-evaluate creativity reflexively as a component of their self identity to enhance their performance as teamworkers.     

LANs — Today and Tomorrow

In many organizations, information travels to a branch office across the country faster than it travels down the hall to the next department. If properly planned, LANs can speed communications in a building, campus, or industrial park. However, proper planning requires an understanding of the technology — both as it is and as it will emerge.     

Team Management Organization in Co‐branding Projects

Creating strategic alliances by engaging in co‐branding has become increasingly widespread in many industries. This form of cooperation allows businesses to share resources and knowledge and to set common goals – but also forces the two companies to work together. This article looks at co‐branding from the perspective of strategic management and focuses on the problems that can arise in team management and organization. The purpose of the article is to present recent research advances that may encourage rethinking co‐branding strategies at the level of projectization which described the level of commitment in the co‐branding project. Characteristics of successful team‐building for co‐branding ventures are also discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Contingency Planning for Systems Evolution after Crisis: Reconstructive Brain Drain Policy-Oriented Implications — The Case of Lebanon, 1975–1994

This paper evaluates the impact of the multinational intellectual emigration crisis, during the period 1975- 1994, on reconstruction policy implications and the future development of Lebanon. It analyses fundamental issues that are relevant to the study of the Lebanese brain drain crisis. The current research study presents a threefold analysis. The first section discusses a socio-demographic trend analysis of Lebanese emigrants during the period 1975- 1994. In the second section, renewed brain influx policy implications and conditions are identified and evaluated through applying the Contingency Typology Simulation Heuristic approach to crisis networking and the Risk Path Analysis Model of creeping crisis multi-level contingency schema in the context of the multinational intellectual emigration stages. Finally, the author identifies a work-in-progress research agenda, providing directions for future research, within the area of systems evolution, intellectual emigration and politics of multinational brain drain.     

3‐D displays — Technologies and testing methods

Abstract— This paper is a review of stereoscopic 3‐D display technologies and testing methods. The first part addresses the different 3‐D displays with focus on technologies. It gives both a background and the logic to group the technologies into categories. A family‐tree chartsummarizes the technology map. This categorization allows for logical grouping of test methods. The second part is a summary of testing procedures developed as part of the ICDM (International Committee for Display Metrology) standards group, affiliated with SID (Society of Information Display). Definitions to key test parameters pertinent to the evaluation of stereoscopic 3‐D displays including formulae development will be presented. This review paper can serve as an introduction to the 3‐D & Stereoscopic Displays chapter of the IDMS (Information Display Measurement Standard) version 1.0 that will be issued by the ICDM group later this year. The IDMS v1.0 will be the successor of the FPDM‐2 from VESA.     

Self-healing systems — survey and synthesis

As modern software-based systems and applications gain in versatility and functionality, the ability to manage inconsistent resources and service disparate user requirements becomes increasingly imperative. Furthermore, as systems increase in complexity, rectification of system faults and recovery from malicious attacks become more difficult, labor-intensive, expensive, and error-prone. These factors have actuated research dealing with the concept of self-healing systems. Self-healing systems attempt to “heal” themselves in the sense of recovering from faults and regaining normative performance levels independently the concept derives from the manner in which a biological system heals a wound. Such systems employ models, whether external or internal, to monitor system behavior and use inputs obtaining therefore to adapt themselves to the run-time environment. Researchers have approached this concept from several different angles this paper surveys research in this field and proposes a strategy of synthesis and classification.