Crisis Management

"A crisis is an event that has a low probability of occurring, but should it occur, can have a vastly negative impact on the organization. The causes of the crisis, as well as the means to resolve it, may not be readily clear; nonetheless, its resolution should be approached as quickly as possible. Finally, the crisis impact may not be initially obvious to all of the relevant stakeholders of the organization." ^{1, p. 5}
If a crisis does occur, it strikes between the 'Stategic Planning' and 'Crisis Management' phases.
Explained below, Crandall et al. (2013) ¹ suggest four phases to effecitvely implement the Management of a Crisis.

Crandall et al. 2013 ¹ further differentiate between an Internal and an External Landscape. The Internal Landscape thereby describes the organizations employees as well as the organizational culture, whereas the External Landscape describes all stakeholders that have vested interest in but are not part of the organization (e.g. customers, government regulatory bodies or suppliers). Additionally, to these other external groups that are not even stakeholders but could still influence of effect the organization are included in the External Landscape as well.
Each of the Crisis Management Phases occurs both within and outside of the organization so e.g. during the Landscape survey it is determined what threats from within the organization as well as from outside of the organization can have an effect on the organizations workings and cause a crisis.

Crandall et. al. (2013) ^{1, p.113f} propose a five step process in line with the four phases mentioned above.

1. The Landscape Survey is spilt bwetween an External and Internal Analysis. The Exteral Analysis focusses on threats and constraints coming from the environment of an organization. It can mostly be identified via accessing tacit knowledge held my mangers in the company.

2. The Internal Analysis focusses on the strengths and weaknesses from within the organization, including an analysis of the organization’s mission and its goals. The Internal Analysis can be performed via a SWOT-Analysis.

3. The Strategy Formulation just like all following steps are performed accross the whole landscape. The goal of the Strategy Formulation is to build a strategy for sustained competitive advantage matching the organizations Strengths and Weaknesses with the environments Opportunities and Threats.

4. The Strategy Execution phase focusses on the implementation of formulated Strategies.

5. The Strategic Control phase firstly tackles any implemented stategie that might be disfuncttional and are not producing the desired outcomes and focusses on the Evaluative Process in which the organizations managers asses the outcomes of the strategy execution.

• Especially the analysis of external environment is one of the major challenges in this strategic crisis management process
• To counter this challenge, managers must obtain as much information as possible about the organization’s environment
• Obtaining this information and forecasting certain events can however be difficult