آموزش دوره مدیریت بحران / ارتباطات

Crisis management is not a specific content area mentioned in A Port of Entry, The Report of the Commission on Public Relations Education issued in 1999. However, crisis management moves the public relations role to the managerial function and requires the development of many skills and knowledge points mentioned in the report. A course or unit in crisis management/communication is an excellent way of teaching public relations theory, management concepts, information management, problem solving, and communication management. Crisis management also reinforces the value of following current events as real-time crises can be integrated into teaching. Through a unit or a course, crisis management/communication provides an engaging mechanism for teaching management-oriented concepts that every organization needs.

Crisis management continues to be a growth area in public relations. While not specifically mentioned as a course or topic area in the 1999 Commission Report, a number of the knowledge and skills covered in the Report are developed in a crisis management course.1 The knowledge elements of a crisis management course include business management and public relations theories. The skills developed in a crisis management course include the management of information, management of communication, strategic planning, problem solving, message production, and issues management. Units on crisis management often are found in the Principles course, Public Relations Writing course, and the Public Relations Planning and Management course. The need for crisis management in practice increases each year as technology and stakeholders continue to create new crises and pressure how organizations should respond to crises. Along with the growth in practice has come the development of crisis management/communication courses at colleges and universities. This article provides a format for developing a course dedicated to crisis management/communication. Such a course would be an elective in the public relations curriculum taken by advanced students (juniors or seniors). The course can even be refined to function on the graduate level. I begin by identifying the objectives of the course, move to discussions of the main topics and evaluations, and conclude with a few pieces of advice and a list of readings.