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

Abstract

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