Situational crisis communication theory

Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT, 2007), posited by W. Timothy Coombs is a theory in the field of crisis communication. It suggests that crisis managers should match strategic crisis responses to the level of crisis responsibility and reputational threat posed by a crisis. Evaluating the crisis type, crisis history and prior relationship reputation will help crisis managers predict the level of reputational threat of an organization and how that organization’s publics will perceive the crisis and attribute crisis responsibility. Thus SCCT can be applied in an organization's crisis management. Three types of crises have been identified by Coombs: the victim cluster, the accidental cluster, and the intentional cluster. The roots for SCCT can be found in Attribution Theory. Attribution Theory holds that people constantly look to find causes, or make attributions, for different events, especially if those events are particularly negative or unexpected. People will attribute responsibility for the event and react emotionally to that event. In the case of organizations, attributions of causality elicit emotional reactions from stakeholders, especially negative emotions if the organization is attributed as the cause for a crisis. These negative emotions, like anger, affect stakeholders’ future interactions with the organization, changing behaviors like purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations. SCCT suggests that the key to determining the most effective strategic crisis response is understanding the crisis situation and the amount of reputational threat being posed by the crisis. Reputational threat is how much damage a crisis could inflict on an organization if no action is taken to respond to it. Reputational threat is influenced by three elements: (1) initial crisis responsibility, (2) crisis history and (3) prior relational reputation.Coombs has identified three 'crisis clusters,' or types of crises, in his SCCT research: the victim cluster, the accidental cluster, and the intentional cluster. Table 2 outlines these crisis clusters. In the victim cluster, the organization is not attributed as the cause of the crisis; rather, the organization is viewed as a victim. In the accidental cluster, the organization has been nominally attributed as the cause of the crisis, but the situation is generally viewed by stakeholders as being unintentional or simply accidental. In the intentional cluster, the organization is given all or most of the attributions for the crisis and shoulders the responsibility. In this case the crisis is considered deliberate.Another element that threatens an organization's reputation is its history of crisis, whether it has faced similar crises in the past. Within this context, how well an organization has treated its stakeholders in the past—its prior relational reputation—also plays a part in assessing reputational threat. These two elements are involved in the second step crisis managers must take in evaluating the reputational threat facing the organization: if either of these elements exist within the organization, it will intensify attributions of the organization and increase the level of reputational threat. If an organization has a history of facing crises or a poor history of dealing with its stakeholders, attributions of crisis responsibility and the level of reputational threat are greater.Once the levels of crisis responsibility and reputational threat have been determined, SCCT provides crisis managers with a theoretical base to their strategic crisis response. SCCT’s list for responding to crises assumes that the organization has accepted some level of responsibility for the crisis. Coombs found that the primary responses to crises in SCCT form three groups: deny, diminish, and rebuild. The SCCT list of crisis response strategies is shown in Table 3.