A study about internal crisis communication strategies in Swedish private and public companies

摘要

Crisis communication has never been more important as in last years. Nevertheless, its focusboth in practice and in theory was majorly directed towards the external component. On theother hand this study wishes to contribute and enhance the visibility and importance ofinternal crisis communication. This is a comparative study that involves interviews withcommunication professionals both from public and private companies in Sweden.The focus is directed towards answering study’s research question how internal crisiscommunication strategies are used in private and public companies? In order to answer thisquestion inductive approach is used and data collected through the use of interview isanalysed by the means of grounded theory. Later on the data was compared with mostrelevant crisis communication theories and existing strategies only to yield most dominantpractices and blueprints both in theory and in practice. Study’s results point towardstraditional understanding of crisis but rather alternative practical approaches to manage crisisinternally. Findings also reveal almost unified character of crisis communication withtendency of internal communication becoming same as external. Furthermore, the impact oforganisational culture on internal crisis communication should not be neglected as it is a partof study’s findings.From more theoretical point of view findings suggest the concept of enacted sensemaking incrisis situations to be inseparable from those traditional understandings of crisis and mostrelevant when it comes to crisis management.