Crisis Communications Management on the Web: How Internet‐Based Technologies are Changing the Way Public Relations Professionals Handle Business Crises

This article analyses how Internet‐based technologies can help companies to: monitor their business environment online in search of potentially conflictive issues that need to be managed (issues management); to prepare a crisis communications plan that considers the Internet side of today's business landscape (crisis communications planning); to respond adequately to crises should they arise by using all available online tools (crisis response); and to establish appropriate Internet‐based actions once the crisis dies down (post‐crisis). The article also questions whether the traditional one‐way corporate approach and tone is still suitable in the new, more participative, online business environment, or whether companies should use a different tone, language, and attitude when engaging with their audiences on the Internet in a crisis situation.     

Between Autonomy and Paternalism: Crisis Managers’ Constructions of Citizens’ Responsibilities in the Context of Crises and Contingencies

Public discussions about the division of responsibilities between state and citizen in crises have led to reformulated policies. These are interpreted and put into practice by crisis managers. Hence, their understandings of citizens’ responsibilities are central for actions and resource allocation. This qualitative study focuses on Swedish crisis managers’ understandings of citizens’ (moral) responsibilities and practices of ‘doing’ responsibilities. Three overarching forms of ‘doing responsibilities’ were found as follows: assignment, assessment and differentiation. These ways of constructing responsibilities were permeated by two diverging rationales: the autonomy rationale and the paternalism rationale. The two rationales add up to a partly contradictory complexity that may explain individuals’ differing responsibility taking. Further, not recognizing this contradiction may negatively affect citizen's willingness to take responsibility when desired.     

Corporate Governance in the Context of Crises: Towards a Stakeholder Theory of Crisis Management

In this paper, we take a step towards developing a stakeholder theory of crisis management. We argue that, in the context of crises, adopting the principles of a stakeholder model of corporate governance will lead companies to engage more frequently in proactive and/or accommodating crisis management behaviour even if these crisis management behaviours are not perceived to maximize shareholder value. We also propose a mechanism that may explain why the stakeholder model may be associated with more successful crisis management outcomes. We conclude by challenging the efficacy of the shareholder view in crisis and crisis‐like situations, and call for further theoretical and empirical research.     

经济危机企业如何选办公设备

受金融危机影响,公司采购预算缩减不少,但来自不同部门的需求却有增无减:业务部要效率、营销部要彩色、领导们要品质和便利、行政部门要控制成本和性能稳定、IT部门要安全、秘书们要健康……     

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.     

Civil Society in Times of Crisis: Understanding Collective Action Dynamics in Digitally‐Enabled Volunteer Networks

Social media play an important role in political mobilization. Voluntary engagement can especially benefit from new opportunities for organizing collective action. Although research has explored the use of Twitter by decentralized individuals for this, there has been little emphasis on its use for community engagement and the provision of public goods. Even less is known about its role in the emergence and offline expansion of spontaneous self‐organized solidarity initiatives. This paper investigates how networked communication facilitates self‐organization and the development of ties in a network of volunteers in Greece. To examine whether initiative‐specific community feelings that can transcend online‐offlsine divides evolve in such hybrid networks, the analysis is complemented with individual‐level data drawn from a survey with the initiative's volunteers.     

Managing Crises in the EU: Some Reflections of a Non‐EU Scholar

In recent years the EU has been increasingly involved in development and implementation of crisis policy as a component of its development and security policy. This process is seriously complicated by the EU architects, who had never conceived it as a crisis management institute. Therefore they failed to design built‐in organisational capacities into the Union to mitigate and respond to crises. In addition, the EU‐agreed overarching concept of crisis as such and EU crisis in particular is missing. Both issues remain a primary question on research and policy agendas. Provided below are some of the author's considerations and comments on these issues. It is argued that, despite the existing divergence in crisis interpretations in the EU, coherent conceptualisation is possible and approaches to this are introduced. Practical implications of generic crisis conceptualisation for EU crisis management policy are analysed. Within this context three major lessons from international experience, including that from the USA and Russia, are emphasised. These concern the issues of organisational flexibility, learning from earlier major crises and comprehensive training of crisis decision units critical for efficient crisis management policy.     

Interactive technologies in the instrumental music classroom: A longitudinal study with the Music Paint Machine

Can interactive technologies be useful for music education? This question was empirically investigated during a nine-month longitudinal study in which twelve children (1st and 2nd grade) learnt to play the clarinet. Six children (the intervention group) received instruction with the Music Paint Machine, an interactive music system that allows a musician to make a digital “painting” by playing music while making various movements on a coloured pressure mat. The other six children (control group) received the instruction without the use of technology.The overall goal of the longitudinal study was (1) to integrate the Music Paint Machine in instrumental music instruction in order to develop good practices and (2) to investigate the effectiveness of instruction with the system on the learning process. To measure the effectiveness of instruction with the system, children were administered the Primary and Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (Gordon, 1986) as pre- and post-test. In addition, pre-tests were organised to map possible confounding variables, such as personality, home musical environment, motor skills and self-regulation skills. Although no statistically significant differences were found between the control and intervention group the study revealed important aspects about the transformative impact of technology in education. Furthermore, dealing with the complexity of a real-life educational setting and with the requirements of the quasi-experimental design, this study has provided insights on methodology (design, measures, analysis) in music educational technology research that can contribute to the further development of this branch of educational research.     

Testable embedded system firmware development: the out–in methodology

Reliability is of paramount importance to just about any embedded system firmware. This paper presents the out–in methodology (OIM), a new reliability-driven approach to developing such a system, which is intended to detect static and, more importantly, dynamic errors much faster than the usual firmware development methods. In this approach, the core functionality is developed together with an interface software that is used specifically for testing the core functionality. This paper describes the use of this approach in a real life situation and discusses the benefits, potential pitfalls, and other possible application areas.     

Assessing the ‘insider–outsider threat’ duality in the context of the development of public–private partnerships delivering ‘choice’ in healthcare services: A sociomaterial critique

Containing the ‘outsider’ threat to the information systems of organisations as well as recognising the disruptive potential of ‘insiders’ are fundamentals of security management. However, the recent development of public–private partnerships in the UK requires a reassessment of the continuing utility of such dualities. This paper draws upon a sociological understanding of the complexities of organisational practices as well as a grounded case study of the implementation of the NHS ‘Choose and book’ service across both public and private healthcare organisations in order to challenge these essentialist forms of sociotechnical analysis. The paper proposes a sociomaterial understanding of information systems and organisational dynamics that does not seek to separate out distinct ‘human’ and ‘technical’ information security risks. Rather, it asserts that the organisational outcomes of the introduction of new information systems are necessarily emergent and contingent, and it is with these indeterminate realities that security analysts have to engage.     

The Need and Development of Crisis Management in Japan’s Public Administration: Lessons from the Kobe Earthquake

The devastating earthquake that struck the City of Kobe on 17 January, 1995, created many critical issues for the government of Japan. The Kobe shock pointedly revealed that both the central and local governments had neglected to develop the administrative skills necessary for managing major disasters. This paper, first, provides brief background information on the Kobe disaster. It is followed by a discussion of the problems of the Self‐Defense Forces and its involvement in Japan’s crisis management. The paper then describes the function of executives at a time of crisis. In the final section, the paper outlines subsequent government efforts to improve the quality of crisis control in Japan.     

How color break‐up occurs in the human‐visual system: The mechanism of the color break‐up phenomenon

Abstract— In the present set of experiments, we examined the mechanisms underlying color break‐up (CBU), a phenomenon observed when images produced with a color‐sequential projector are viewed. The perceived position of CBU was measured during fast eye movement, saccade with static and briefly flashed stimuli. Results showed that CBU did not simply correspond to the locus of the stimulus on the retina during saccades, because the width of the CBU perception was narrower than the distance of the eye movements. This effect was thought to be related to visual stability, which allows objects to be perceived as stationary even when the eyes move and the retinal image changes position. Visual stability is assumed to operate by compensating for the change in retinal image position using eye‐position signals; however, this compensation is imperfect during saccades. Thus, incomplete compensation results in a CBU perception that is of a narrower width than the amplitude of the saccade. In conclusion, CBU cannot be simulated with moving video cameras because it results largely from the mechanisms of visual perception. Large inter‐individual differences in perception of CBU were also found. This observation also supports the idea that CBU depends on the mechanism of perception.     

Effects of the News‐Finds‐Me Perception in Communication: Social Media Use Implications for News Seeking and Learning About Politics

With social media at the forefront of today's media context, citizens may perceive they don't need to actively seek news because they will be exposed to news and remain well‐informed through their peers and social networks. We label this the “news‐finds‐me perception,” and test its implications for news seeking and political knowledge: “news‐finds‐me effects.” U.S. panel‐survey data show that individuals who perceive news will find them are less likely to use traditional news sources and are less knowledgeable about politics over time. Although the news‐finds‐me perception is positively associated with news exposure on social media, this behavior doesn't facilitate political learning. These results suggest news continues to enhance political knowledge best when actively sought.     

Managing the Co‐operation–Competition Dilemma in R&D Alliances: A Multiple Case Study in the Advanced Materials Industry

Generating value in R&D alliances requires intensive and fine‐grained interaction between collaborating partners. At the same time, more intensive co‐operation increases the risk of competitive abuse of the R&D alliance by one or more partners. In this study, we explore how managers address the fundamental tension between the need for co‐operation and the risk of competition, using an in‐depth case study of five R&D alliances in the advanced materials industry. Based on our data, we identify two relational strategies to enhance co‐operation between engineers of different partners (i.e., adopting boundary‐spanning activities and installing similar technical equipment) and three structural strategies to mitigate the risk of such intensified co‐operation (i.e., definition of partner‐specific task domains, definition of partner‐specific knowledge domains and definition of partner‐specific commercial domains). In addition, we find that partners tend to use particular combinations of such relational and structural strategies at different stages of the alliance life‐cycle to address the co‐operation–competition dilemma.     

Full-Body Compliant Human–Humanoid Interaction: Balancing in the Presence of Unknown External Forces

This paper proposes an effective framework of human-humanoid robot physical interaction. Its key component is a new control technique for full-body balancing in the presence of external forces, which is presented and then validated empirically. We have adopted an integrated system approach to develop humanoid robots. Herein, we describe the importance of replicating human-like capabilities and responses during human-robot interaction in this context. Our balancing controller provides gravity compensation, making the robot passive and thereby facilitating safe physical interactions. The method operates by setting an appropriate ground reaction force and transforming these forces into full-body joint torques. It handles an arbitrary number of force interaction points on the robot. It does not require force measurement at interested contact points. It requires neither inverse kinematics nor inverse dynamics. It can adapt to uneven ground surfaces. It operates as a force control process, and can therefore, accommodate simultaneous control processes using force-, velocity-, or position-based control. Forces are distributed over supporting contact points in an optimal manner. Joint redundancy is resolved by damping injection in the context of passivity. We present various force interaction experiments using our full-sized bipedal humanoid platform, including compliant balance, even when affected by unknown external forces, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the method.     

Terrorism Communication: Characteristics and Emerging Perspectives in the Scientific Literature 2002–2011

This paper aims to clarify current knowledge on the contribution of communication to crisis management in the case of terrorism incidents. This is done by means of a systematic review of the scientific literature on terrorism communication over the last 10 years to identify the many challenges facing communication in such crises, and represents the first attempt of its kind. To date, within the literature on terrorism communication, much attention has been paid to chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear hazards. Terrorism crises are complex and challenging. Preparedness for such diverse low‐probability high‐impact crises can best be included in a wider educative approach. Terrorism crises call for fast information updates that, using a multi‐channel approach, can be tailored to fit different needs and (social) media habits.