A crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting an organization, company, or industry, as well as its publics, products, services, or good name. It interrupts normal business transactions and can sometimes threaten the existence of the organization. A crisis can be a strike, terrorism, fire, boycott, product tampering, product failure, or numerous other events. The size of the organization is irrelevant. It can be a multinational corporation. It can be a one-person business. It can be an individual.

Crisis management is a process of strategic planning for a crisis or negative turning point, a process that removes some of the risk and uncertainty from the negative occurrence, and thereby allows the organization to be a in greater control of its own destiny.

Crisis communications are the communications between the organization and its publics prior to, during, and after the negative occurrence. The communications are designed to minimize damage to the reputation of the organization.

Effective crisis management includes crisis communications that can not only alleviate or eliminate the crisis, but can sometimes bring the organization a more positive image than before the crisis.

Publics are the specific audiences targeted by programs. People frequently use the term "general public," but public relations professionals are usually more specific in their targeting.

Public relations is concerned with reputation. It exists to avoid negative reputation and to create or enhance positive reputation. It is largely the fear of negative reputation that causes organizations to develop public relations departments, hire public relations agencies, or both.

1. Detection

2. Prevention/Preparation

3. Containment

4. Recovery

5. Learning

The detection stage may begin with noting warning signs, or prodromes or the prodromal stage. Some crises have no noticeable prodromes, many do.

Crisis detection also refers to a system within the organization that enables key personnel to be immediately notified of a crisis. An organization has a considerable advantage if it knows about a crisis before its publics do, especially before the news media. This gives the organization time to draft a statement, make preparations for a news conference, notify the crisis team, and call spokespersons.

Continuous ongoing public relations programs and regular two-way communications build relationships key publics and thereby prevent crises, lessen the blows of crises, or limit the duration of crises.

There are crises that cannot be prevented. The crisis communications plan (CCP) is the primary tool of preparedness. It is manual telling each key person on the crisis team what his or her role is, whom to notify, how to reach people, what to say, and so forth. The crisis communications plan is like functioning collective brain for all persons involved in a crisis, persons whose individual brains may not operate at capacity due to the shock or emotions of the crisis event.

Containment refers to the effort to limit the duration of the crisis or keep it from spreading to other areas affecting the organization.

Recovery involves efforts to return to business as usual. Organizations will want to leave the crisis behind and restore normalcy as soon as possible. This may mean restoring the confidence of key publics. It will mean communicating this return to normal business.

The learning phase is a process of examining the crisis and determining what was lost, what was gained, and how the organization performed in the crisis. It is an evaluative procedure also designed to make the crisis a prodrome for the future.

In a crisis, the public perceives truth as whatever public opinion says. An organization in crisis must prove to its publics, and often to the general public, that the prevailing opinion is not factual. In contrast to a court of law where a person is innocent until proven guilty, in the court of public opinion a person or organization is guilty until proven innocent.

Public opinion is difficult to define, but it is based on attitudes of individuals toward specific issues. These attitudes are based on age, educational level, religion, country, state, city, neighborhood, family background and traditions, social class, and racial background. All of these help to form each individual's attitudes. A predominance of similar attitudes among a group of people make up public opinion.

People are either in favor or an issue, against it, neutral, or could not care less. Most people, unfortunately, fall into the latter category. Public relations tries to reinforce positive attitudes, change negative attitudes, and provide information in a way that causes the unopinionated and neutral to form the opinion most conductive to the organization's function.

Theories on crisis communication basically explain why various techniques and tactics are or are not successful, whether the same techniques would be expected to work in future crises, and how the techniques could be altered to produce the desired success.