Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Management - Essay Example That is the goal of crisis management, which can be defined as a set of activities aimed at minimizing the potential, or responding to an existing crisis effectively. As such, an effective crisis management plan may provide a company with an opportunity to effectively take urgent actions for minimizing the harm caused by a crisis and, in such a way, save the future of the organization. Furthermore, relevant crisis and issue management activities may even help the company to avoid a crisis and, as a result, save valuable resources to be invested into further growth and development. In is especially true considering the fact that news in the contemporary world spread within hours. Therefore, urgent actions for rescuing the company should be taken immediately after an issue arises. At the same time, good and well-structured relationships with the media may help an organization to decrease the level of crisis’ impact on the company’s future. Therefore, the given paper will try to draw up a basic crisis management plan for Shuanghui Business Group, a food business group that majors in processing pork. The company has already had some experience managing crisis. However, the presented plant will help it to forecast and assess potential future crisis, recommend specific crisis management processes and team structures, as well as provide a list of materials to be to be produced as part of the crisis toolkit. In addition, business continuity considerations will be addressed and a proposal for testing and refining the crisis plan will be presented. All this information will help the company to prepare for a potential crisis and, furthermore, get an opportunity to avoid it and save money. Forecasting and assessing a potential crisis the organization could face. On the 15th of March, 2011, Shuanghui Business Group was suspected of using clenbuterol pigs. As a result, the stock of the company dropped to the trading limit causing a loss of CNY 5.2 billion in th e capital market. Furthermore, the company had to withdraw its products form all the major supermarkets, while some marketplaces even stopped selling the products of the Business Group or refused to continue working with the company. The organization took back all of its products circulating in market and closed manufacturing down to be rectified (Zhang, 2011). Nevertheless, what Shuanghui Business Group experienced is the crisis of consumers’ trust or, if defined more precisely, a product-harm crisis (Dawar & Pillutla, 2000, p. 215), since it involved recalling products from all of the distribution networks due to safety concerns (Chen, Ganesan, & Liu, 2009, p. 214). As a result, the brand’s equity and company’s reputation got damaged, customers’ loyalty decreased, and revenues and market shares – lost (Laufer & Coombs, 2006, p. 379). So, in order for the Business Group not to experience such a disastrous situation again, continuous forecasting an d assessing a potential crisis the organization can face should be conducted. The very first condition for forecasting a crisis is noting both internal and external inputs. People’s perceptions of information differ – what one may consider to be a potential threat will be missed by another. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the organization does not miss any internal or external issues that might indicate a potential crisis (Harvard Business School, 2004, p. 12). For this reason clear and open communication channels should be determined and