COM5360 Unit I Assignment

COM 5360, Crisis Communication and Leadership 1

Unit I Assignment

Conduct a search of news reports that involve an organization responding to crisis events. Search for a range of reports to get an overview of the types of crises that organizations have responded to in recent years. Then, select one crisis event to develop your paper, addressing the following points. Support your response with specific examples from the news report and our assigned readings, and illustrate the specific course concepts you relied on to draw your conclusions.

Define organizational crisis, and explain the difference between risk and crisis. Describe the criteria leaders should use to determine whether an event constitutes a crisis event. Who were the stakeholders? Who was impacted by the crisis—both inside and outside of the company? Was the crisis preventable? Were the circumstances of the crisis predictable/unpredictable? Were there elements of uncertainty that were outside of the organizational leaders' control? What can the organizational leaders learn from the crisis and their responses? Who spoke to the media/public on behalf of the organization? What message did he or she convey on behalf of the organization (i.e., did he or she seek to support stakeholders, assign/accept blame for the crisis, communicate the organization's plan for recovery)? How could the organization make the response more effective?

See the grading rubric for additional guidelines. It is recommended that you use the rubric as a checklist as you draft the essay. Refer to the rubric often, and be sure to fulfill the requirements for all criteria listed.

Your paper must be at least two pages in length. Adhere to APA Style when constructing this assignment, including in-text citations and references for all sources that are used. Please note that no abstract is needed.

This formal paper example provided by the Waldorf University Writing Center shows this type of formatting.