CRISIS MANAGEMENT: THE 'BEIJING TORCH'

Effective crisis management protects organisations, their reputation and, at times, can salvage their very existenxe. In the case of this chosen case study, the protests against the Beijing Olympics.

Ineffective crisis management could potentially harm China's hard-won reputation reputation built over recent decades.

It is no rocket science that recent pro-Tibet campaigners are quickly disrupting normal runnings of much anticipated Beijing Olympics - which China has been working incredibly hard for over six years to use as a vehicle to establish it's nation as an economic and political power house.

However, as more and more oppositions and global protests over shadows the Olympic games, creating embarassing headlines as we've seen on the streets of London during the Olympic torch journey through our Capital's streets.

36 people were arrested, two protesters were held for trying to put out the flame which one man ried to grab the torch out of a celebrity carrier's hands. The images splashed across newspapers were one of shock and chaos. I couldn't actually see the flame admist 2,000 police uniforms, China's blue track-suited "guardians of the flame" and hundreds of protest placards.




The question is couldn't the Chinese government have prepared something to combat this embarrasing images which has already casted a shadow over the sporting tradition?

Surely, this crisis could have been identified before it happened hence a better response to the situation could have been applied. Schlors, Heath (1997) supports the argument that managing issues can help prevent a crisi. He states: "

if a organisation is engaged in issues management before, during, and after a crisi, it can mitigate - perhaps prevent - the crisi from becoming an issue by working quickly and responsibly to establish or re-establish the level of control desired by relevant stakeholders

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Perhaps, i'm playing naive and expecting the Chinese government to have predicted this outcome. Perhaps, it is impossible to determine how protesters will recruit across the world afterall it is alledged that in China, no protests have been seen during the Olympic rally show on TV.

This will make sense thinking on Schlors Sam Black's breakdown of crisis into the 'known uknown' and the 'unknown unknown'. The latter are events that cannot be predicted and that can come about from unconnected events or circumstances that are unpredictable.

I will not share my personal views on the current situation - Iam neither a politician or a sporting athlete what I will conclude with it is how China communicates about the crisis that will make the real difference. There are tons of evidence that good communication in a crisis situation can support or increase a country's reputation. It is evident that China's lack of effective communication solutions is already having a powerful negative effect on the country and sadly, the Olympics games.

China needs to communicate exactly what it is going to do exactly, in a timely manner to all stakeholders - the Olympics board, sponsors, governments, Tibetians, the press, sporting associations, athletes and many others.