Advanced crisis planning
A firm must have a proper crisis management plan to effectively react to a crisis and minimize the extent of the reputational damage caused. Hence, Boeing should not have waited for the crisis to take place for it to act. Before the crisis happened, Boeing ought to have contingencies in place for the eventuality of a crisis, assessed the likely impact of a crisis to its customers, employees, suppliers among other stakeholders as well as to the firm’s value. Advanced crisis planning is the key to a firm’s survival in the event of a crisis.
The Airline should have developed a clear crisis management plan to minimize the extent of the reputational damage following the Ethiopian crash. Such a plan would have seen the firm identify a spokesperson to communicate the firm’s position concerning the crisis. Moreover, the firm needed to react immediately the crisis occurred and show unwavering support to the victims and express its commitment to ensuring that all was well at the firm. Effective communication honestly and openly would help the firm to minimize the reputational damage caused as a result of rumor-mongering.
According to the structural-functional systems theory, effective crisis management entails the provision of information to employees, customers, and the entire public openly and honestly. In line with this theory, the firm should have involved each member of the management team in handling the crisis. Moreover, the firm should have kept communication lines open and transparent to allow all stakeholders to participate in the communication. This would have enabled interested parties to access information and to contribute to decision making thereby making all parties to feel part and parcel of the communication process. Boeing’s way of handling the crisis created the impression that the firm was hiding the truth from the public.
The firm took too long to communicate with most of the time being spends in closed doors discussing the crisis without involving stakeholders and interested parties. This contributed to the criticism and reputational damage since members of the public easily believed the rumors since they were not incorporated in decision making. To alleviate the reputational damage, the firm would have developed a proper crisis management plan allowing stakeholders and interested parties to participate by asking and answering questions. This would enable the management team to address the crisis openly and transparently while at the same time guiding interested parties on how to avoid further problems.
Finally, in the internet age, social media plays a crucial role in spreading information relating to a crisis. One of the mistakes that the management at Boeing did was to ignore the influence of social media in the spread of information. This allowed critics to use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in spreading negative information that caused reputational damage to the organization. Therefore, to minimize the extent of the reputational damage, the firm should have taken control of social media by engaging internet users; providing answers to their concerns.