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Responding to Crisis

A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication

• Edited by Dan Pyle Millar, Robert L. Heath

• Price: $52.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 392
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 1st October 2003
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-4060-5

About the Book

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have explored the nature, theory, and best practices that are required for effective and ethical crisis preparation and response. The consequences of being unprepared to respond quickly, appropriately, and ethically to a crisis are dramatic and well documented. For this reason, crisis consulting and the development of crisis response plans and protocols have become more than a cottage industry.


Taking a rhetorical view of crisis events and utterances, this book is devoted to adding new insights to the discussion, and to describing a rhetorical approach to crisis communication. To help set the tone for that description, the opening chapter reviews a rhetorical perspective on organizational crisis. As such it raises questions and provokes issues more than it addresses and answers them definitively. The other chapters can be viewed as a series of experts participating in a panel discussion. The challenge to each of the authors is to add depth and breadth of understanding to the analysis of the rhetorical implications of a crisis, as well as to the strategies that can be used ethically and responsibly. Central to this analysis is the theoretic perspective that crisis response requires rhetorically tailored statements that satisfactorily address the narratives surrounding the crisis which are used by interested parties to define and judge it.


This volume will be of value to scholars and students interested in crisis communication, and is certain to influence future work and research on responding to crises.

Table of Contents

Contents: R.L. Heath, D.P. Millar, A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication: Management, Communication Processes, and Strategic Responses. D.P. Millar, Exposing the Errors: An Examination of the Nature of Organizational Crises. R.L. Heath, Part I:Crisis Preparation: Planning for the Inevitable. D.W. Stacks, Crisis Management: Toward a Multidimensional Model of Public Relations. T.L. Holder, Constructing Response During Uncertainty: Organizing for Crisis. C. Bechler, Reframing the Organizational Exigency: Taking a New Approach in Crisis Research. B.A. Olaniran, D.E. Williams, Burkian Counternature and the Vigilant Response: An Anticipatory Model of Crisis Management and Technology. W.T. Coombs, S.J. Holladay, Reasoned Action in Crisis Communication: An Attribution Theory-Based Approach to Crisis Management. J.L. Borda, S. Mackey-Kallis, A Model for Crisis Management. M.D. Saunders, Patterns of Conflict Preceding a Crisis: A Case Study Analysis. R.L. Heath, Part II:Crisis Response: The Time to Speak. F.E. Millar, D.B. Beck, Metaphors of Crisis. R.L. Heath, Telling a Story: A Narrative Approach to Communication During Crisis. M.R. Finch, L.S. Welker, Informed Organizational Improvisation: A Metaphor and Method for Understanding, Anticipating, and Performatively Constructing the Organization's Precrisis Environment. K.M. Hearit, J.L. Courtright, A Symbolic Approach to Crisis Management: Sears' Defense of Its Auto Repair Policies. S. Wilihnganz, J.L. Hart, G.B. Leichty, Telling the Story of Organizational Change. J.E. Massey, Managing Organizational Images: Crisis Response and Legitimacy Restoration. R.L. Heath, Part III:After the Dance Is Over: Postcrisis Response. T.L. Sellnow, R.R. Ulmer, Ambiguity as an Inherent Factor in Organizational Crisis Communication. W.L. Benoit, Image Restoration Discourse and Crisis Communication. S.S. Huxman, Exigencies, Explanations, and Executions: Toward a Dynamic Theory of the Crisis Communication Genre. K. Leeper, Downsizing or Reduction-in-Force: A Crisis Residual. F.J. Marra, Excellent Crisis Communication: Beyond Crisis Plans. K.T. Theus, Issue Management During Sudden Executive Departures: Sensemaking, Enactment and Communication.

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