Lecture 2 Flashcards
(13 cards)
On which levels does ethics play a role in strategic communication?
Ethics play a role on multiple levels:
- Organization’s behaviour, policy, and mission
- Organization’s leaders’ behaviour and doing (role models)
- The way the organization chooses to communicate their aims, policies, doing and behaviour (their strategic communication)
How can we describe ethics?
- ‘Moral principles that govern an actor’s behaviour’ (individual level)
- ‘Moral rules help to structure society’ (societal level)
What are the consequences of breaking moral rules for an organization?
Breaking moral rules has consequences for an organization:
- Reputational (damage to reputation, image, or license to practice)
- Legal (if moral rules overlap with laws)
- Socially (social backlash)
- Economically (loss of stakeholder trust)
What is the utilitarian (consequential) ethical guideline?
- Consequential approach: which decision has the most positive outcome for the most people?
- Criticism:
• Does it always help to do the right thing? (Sometimes you can’t see all consequences in advance)
• What about minorities?
What is the deontological ethical guideline?
- Categorical imperative: it could become a universal law (e.g., killing or lying is never good)
- Criticism:
- Two categorical imperatives at the same time (which one is more important?)
- Can ethical rules always be(come) universal? (different cultures)
What is the virtue ethical guideline?
- We all have our own individual morals
- Conscience of the decision maker is the guideline
- Criticism:
• High risk of ethical disputes / conflicting decisions
How can we deal with imperfect ethical approaches?
- Define the issue
- Identify issue-stakeholders
- Define and evaluate all options (three approaches)
- Make and justify decision
What is an issue and what is issue management?
- Issue (Cornelissen 2020): A public concern about the organization’s decisions and operations that may or may not also involve a point of conflict in opinions and judgements regarding those decisions and operations.
- Issue management (Douglas 2008): A strategic process that helps organizations detect and respond appropriately to emerging trends or changes in the sociopolitical environment.
What are the stages of the issue life cycle?
- Potential stage: there is little media attention; no one is particularly concerned with it, at least not publicly.
• Trigger event (e.g., social media post, angry customer, accident in factory) - Emerging stage: involvement of organization has now become public; media attention may grow (could go viral or disappear).
- Current stage: the issue is now fully public. Media coverage is high and the organization must respond.
- Crisis stage: the issue has escalated and may cause serious harm to organization’s reputation. Immediate and effective communication is needed.
- Dormant stage: the issue has been public but has faded from attention. It could re-emerge any time. (Sleeping volcano)
What is issue monitoring?
- Scanning news and social media on specific or general issues for emerging issues.
- Check whether they involve risks or chances for the organization.
What are the four issue management communication strategies?
- Buffering strategy: keep influence from outside from interfering with organization’s operations (stonewall the issue).
- Bridging strategy: in response to claims, seeks to adapt organisational activities. (The organization starts dialogue)
- Advocacy strategy: proactively trying to influence public opinion through campaigns and lobbying.
- Thought Leadership Strategy: organization identifies emerging issues and proactively attempts to steer the issue debate in a beneficial direction, before the issue becomes current.
What is the issue arena theory?
Strategic communicators keep an eye on four elements of an issue to decide whether and how to participate in the debate or issue:
- Involved actors (all actors that have interest in issue)
- Places of interaction (where does debate take place?)
- Issue related aspects (details of the issue)
- Course of the debate
What are the research domains for issues?
The organisation
- Interest in the issue
- Backgrounds
Communication analyses
- Owned media
- Earned media
- Paid media
Issue analysis
- Issue history
- Issue aspects
Target publics (stakeholders)
- Latent (not aware), aware and active publics (doing something about the issue)
