Crisis communication as institutional maintenance

Abstract

The aim of the article is to extend our understandings of crisis communication by examining the dynamics of its practice and how it is performed by organizations when mobilized by institutional disruptions. In the article, I analyze how three governmental agencies in Sweden – responsible for the governance of the financial markets – responded to the global financial crisis and how they communicate to maintain the markets as institutions. The study takes its point of departure in neo-institutional theory and the framework of institutional work and shows how the financial crisis calls forth the use of communication for the maintenance of rules, norms and practices governing the financial markets by the use of three strategies, providing, policing and routinizing. Thus, crisis communication, I argue, can be understood as a form of institutional work aiming for the maintenance of an institution at the same time as it has to be adapted to the very same conditions where the interests of individual organizations are subordinated to collective interests and social structures.

Keywords

Crisis communication financial crisis governmental agencies institutional work neo-institutional theory Sweden

Introduction

The Global Financial Crises 2008, following the bankruptcy of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers, created extensive disturbance for banks, mortgage credit institutions, mutual fund companies, and other actors active on the financial markets. In many cases, these disruptions were met by organizations who used communication in different forms to uphold trust and their reputation but also to attribute responsibilities and define solutions to the crisis (cf. Bourne and Edwards, 2012; Lee et al., 2011; Lischinsky, 2011; Nord and Olsson, 2013; Schultz and Raupp, 2010). However, as much as it was a crisis for individual organizations, it was a crisis for the financial markets as an institution, and a number of initiatives were taken globally to maintain the markets’ functionality, often by governmental bodies (Lybeck, 2009).

Historically scholars have considered institutions to be more or less stable constructions governing individuals, organizations, and other social actors in line with what is apprehended as appropriate (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). However, more recently many have been trying to understand the role of actors in effecting, changing, and maintaining institutions. Many times, as a reaction to the difficulties, earlier approaches have had to explain how institutions arise, endure, change and evaporate. Significant for these more recent attempts is the importance they ascribe to communication where symbolism, narratives, and rhetoric are regarded as essential in all institutional processes (Lammers, 2011; Nelson et al., 2004; Suddaby, 2011).

One stream of research picking up on these attempts focuses on institutional work acknowledging the intentional and knowledgeable capacity of actors to deal with their institutional environments (Lawrence et al., 2009a; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). There are three forms of work according to Lawrence and Suddaby (2006): creating, maintaining, and disrupting, where the maintenance of institutions includes activities aiming for the support of institutional conditions. The idea is that institutions to a large extent are maintained by socialized behaviors performed as habits, routines, and rituals (Scott, 2008) but still in need of active support. In some situations, this need is more urgent, that is, when the foundations for an institution are set under pressure due to unexpected and dramatically events, that is, crises (Beckert, 1999; Birkland, 1997; Hoffman, 1999; Lawrence et al., 2009b; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).

In the light of these developments, some forms of crisis communication could be characterized as a form of work that in conjunction with other practices is aimed for the maintenance of institutions. Prior research on crisis communication has often disregarded these preconditions for organizational activities and almost exclusively focused on individual organizations. Therefore, researchers often search for motives and reasons in the realm of individual or organizational considerations where reputation and organizational relationships to stakeholders often are given priority. As a consequence, scholars avoid recognizing the full range of communicative activities performed by organizations in times of crisis, and they also lose track of the motives for these activities. However, some types of crisis demand a shift in focus, from the individual to the social.

The aim of this article is to extend our understandings of crisis communication by examining the dynamics of its practice and how it is performed by organizations. I will show how the financial crisis calls forth activities of skillful and intentional use of communication for the maintenance of rules, norms, and practices governing the financial markets. Thus, crisis communication, I will argue, can be understood as a form of institutional work aiming for the maintenance of an institution at the same time as it has to be adapted to the very same conditions where the interests of individual organizations are subordinated to collective interests.

The analysis rests on a study of three Swedish governmental agencies, Finansinspektionen (Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority), the Riksbank (Sweden’s Central Bank), and Riksgälden (The Swedish National Debt Office), responsible for the regulation, control, and/or the financial market defense, covering the period just before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the year to follow. The material is collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analyses of press releases, Web pages, reports, and other written materials.

The article starts with a literature review pointing out the need for analyses of the structural conditions for crisis communication. Thereafter, I discuss neo-institutional theory with certain focus on institutional maintenance, followed by a section on methodology. I then analyze how the three agencies perform their institutional maintenance by the use of three different forms of crisis communication, providing, policing and routinizing. I conclude with a discussion on how the results from this study urge us to redefine our understanding of crisis communication.

Crisis communication

Research on crisis communication has become essential to the fields of communication management, corporate communication, and public relations (Elving, 2013), and it covers a wide variety of crises, such as disasters (Kivikuru et al., 2009; Waymer and Heath, 2007), epidemics (Chen, 2008; Lee, 2009), accidents (Lee, 2004), terrorism (Greer and Moreland, 2003), product failure (Brinson and Benoit, 1996; Ihlen, 2002), corporate downsizing (Christen, 2005), moral scandals (Benoit and Brinson, 1999; Fortunato, 2008), and others (e.g. Frandsen and Johansen, 2010; Holmström et al., 2009). As from the beginning, crisis communication has been an applied field where the principal aim of research has been to develop models and theories providing guidance for managers working in organizations (Coombs, 2010; Frandsen and Johansen, 2007; Heath, 2010). Thereby, researchers have focused their analyzes on individual organizations and their interactions with stakeholder(s) searching for typical outputs and/or effects of communication executed to safeguard or support stakeholders (Arpan and Pompper, 2003; Kivikuru et al., 2009) or the organization’s reputation (Benoit, 1997; Coombs and Schmidt, 2000; Lee, 2004; Schultz et al., 2011; Ulmer et al., 2007) whether it is corporations (Caldiero et al., 2009; Huang, 2008; Ihlen, 2002; Sohn and Lariscy, 2012; Veil et al., 2012), public administrations (Murphree et al., 2009; Vigsø, 2010), religious organizations (Legg, 2009), sports organizations (Pfahl and Bates, 2008), non-profit organizations (Sisco, 2012), universities (Fortunato, 2008), or organizations in general (Coombs, 1995, 1998; Seeger et al., 2003; Wan and Schell, 2007).

This extensive research has contributed significantly to our appreciation of organizational conditions for crisis communication, and it has produced important insights about stakeholder preferences in different crisis situations. However, the tendency to analyze one organization at a time has led to a situation where the studied organization tends to be defined as a ‘sender’ reducing other organizations and actors to stakeholders and ‘receivers’ of the organization’s messages. Inherent in this is an overestimation of individuals’ – managers as well as stakeholders – liberty of action. Previous research also tends to reduce crisis communication to public communication and thereby foreseen other forms of communication.

To come to terms with these limitations, we must extend our understanding of crisis communication and realize it as a social activity that is created, altered, and performed through organization–environment relations. That is to say that our understanding of crisis communication need to be less organicentric and open up for the analysis of the institutional conditions in which the practice is embedded. Hereby, we can get a better understanding of why crisis communication is practiced, how it is practiced, under what conditions it is practiced, and what consequences the practice has for individuals, organizations, institutions, and society as a whole.

A neo-institutional perspective opens up for this kind of analyses, and in the following I will develop the discussion on neo-institutional theories further and show how this perspective could help us to get a wider understanding of crisis communication as a practice and the circumstances it is practiced under.

Institutions

There are two principal ways to define institutions. One is where an institution is regarded as a formal organization, given a mandate to perform certain activities (i.e. asylums, the Church, universities). Another – the one referred to in this article – is where an institution is defined as a ‘more-or-less taken-for-granted repetitive social behavior that is underpinned by normative systems and cognitive understandings that give meaning to social exchange and thus enable self-reproducing social order’. (Greenwood et al., 2008: 4f). As institutions, financial markets are socially constructed systems where activities are situated and embedded in structural conditions governing individuals and organizations in line with what is apprehended as appropriate. They give meaning to actions and exchanges and are supported by regulative, normative, and/or cognitive systems (Scott, 2008), but their survival rests – first and foremost – upon relatively self-activating social processes and repetitive social behavior rather than observable enforcement (Greenwood et al., 2008). It is this habitual reproduction of activities and discourses that generate the grounds for institutions’ power – they are more or less taken for granted. At the same time, institutions – as all social constructions – are open for alliterations and interpretations, and hereby they rely on actions taken by individuals and organizations for their reproduction (Lawrence et al., 2009b; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).

The maintenance of institutions is to a large extent achieved by socialized behaviors performed as habits, routines, and rituals (Scott, 2008). In addition, our use of language reproduces systems of thought promoting certain ideas, scripts, and schemas controlling our perceptions of the world, whereas certain things seem natural and self-evident (Nelson et al., 2004; Zilber, 2002, 2009). Nevertheless, there are situations when technologies, structures, procedures, norms, and regulations that are highly institutionalized are put to test and need active support for persistence (Oliver, 1992). That is to say situations when actions taken for granted becomes questioned due to their inabilities to manage the problems they were constructed to solve, are seen as an obstruction to further developments or are regarded as obsolete (Beckert, 1999; Lawrence et al., 2009b; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). This may be awakened by gradual changes, but there are situations when the need for support is more urgent and when the foundations for an institution are set under pressure due to unexpected and/or dramatically events, what Hoffman (1999) calls disruptive events or what Birkland (1997) label as focusing events. In short, these events could be described as unexpected situations where established norms and patterns of behavior are violated, representing a departure from what is seen as normal and thereby creating extensive unpredictability. That is to say events that create disturbing uncertainties for social actors, calling for actions sometimes including experiments with unorthodox means and activities differing from what normally is done.

Institutional maintenance

When individuals and organizations act purposively to maintain institutions, they perform one form of institutional work (others are creating and disrupting institutions) (Lawrence et al., 2009a; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). A type of activity that is often carried out by actors with certain skills (social, technological, etc.) and resources (i.e. memberships, formal position, networks) increasing their abilities to be successful (cf. DiMaggio, 1988; Hoffman, 1999). In their overview of earlier research, Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) make a distinction between two broad categories of institutional maintenance: activities ‘ensuring adherence to rules system’ and activities ‘reproducing existing norms and beliefs systems’. The first category covers three different forms of work: Enabling work, that is, creating rules, regulations, and instructions facilitating, supplementing, and supporting institutions; policing, ensuring compliance to rules through enforcement, auditing, and monitoring; deterring, that is, establishing barriers to obstruct institutional changes, whereas the second category covers three other forms of work, valourizing and demonizing, that is, presenting positive and negative examples that show the normative foundations of institutions; mythologizing, that is, creating and preserving myths supporting the historical value of an institution; embedding and routinizing, that is, including the pillars of institutions into everyday practices. In addition to this, Pallas and Fredriksson (2011) pointed out providing, that is, protection of certain interests by the dissemination of information and presentation of fact and figures supporting an institution’s legal, moral, and ideological foundations.

Institutional maintenance is performed by individuals and organizations using their skills and resources to gain sustainability and predictability, and by being reflexive, they increase their possibilities to reach their sought-after results. However, this is not to ascribe individual’s and organization’s sovereignty. Social actors are always embedded in social structures and dependent on resources available in specific institutional contexts. So when actors act to maintain institutions, they are restricted by conscious and unconscious limitations specific for the institution they are set out to take care of. Actors cannot set themselves free from the very institution they are about to maintain and in addition the strategies used must be legitimate according to the rules, norms, and ideas they are performed to sustain (Lawrence, 1999; Lawrence et al., 2009b, 2011; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).

The Swedish financial markets

The financial markets include the money market, the bond market, the share market, the foreign-exchange market, and the derivatives market and serve as the infrastructure for exchanges between actors (banks, investors, insurance companies, pension funds, states, corporations, consumers, and others) selling and buying financial assets. Its primary functions is to allocate resources but also to simplify trade; facilitate transferees of economic resources over time and space and between different sectors; limit and distribute risks between investors; distribute information about prices, supply, and demand and thereby make decentralized decision-making possible. The financial markets are essential to a capitalistic system and could be defined as a ‘public good’. The legal regulation is thereby extensive in comparison with other markets, and extensive efforts are made to maintain its institutional properties, functionality, and performances (Wissén and Wallgren, 2011).

The Swedish markets are dominated by four banks, Handelsbanken, Nordea, Stockholms Enskilda Bank (SEB), and Swedbank, and are, in contrast to most other countries in the European Union (EU), highly concentrated (European Commission, 2007). There are three governmental agencies, Finansinspektionen, The Riksbank, and Riksgälden, supervising its functionality and evaluating its status.

Finansinspektionen evaluates the financial health of banks and other financial actors. This includes examinations of the risks and control systems in and supervision of compliance with statutes, ordinances, and other regulations. In addition to this, Finansinspektionen also assesses sectors as well as the financial markets as a system. According to the Banking and Financing Business Act, all operations offering financial services in Sweden require a permit granted by Finansinspektionen (Finansinspektionen, n.d.). Finansinspektionen is subject to the Swedish Government.

The Riksbank is Sweden’s central bank. It is responsible for the monetary policy but also to promote a safe and efficient payment system. In short, it has two assignments: maintaining the value of money, that is, price stability, which means that the Riksbank should act to sustain a low and stable inflation rate, and a safe and efficient payment mechanism, that is, financial stability assigning the Riksbank to promote stability in the Swedish financial system as a whole. In crisis situations, the Riksbank may provide temporary liquidity assistance to banks, that is, functions as lender of the last resort (Riksbanken, 2011). The Riksbank is subject to the Riksdag, i.e. the Swedish Parliament.

Riksgälden is assigned to survey, attend to, and evaluate operational and security risks in the financial system. The objective is to maintain effective risk management in accordance with market practice and thereby be on a par with comparable stakeholders in financial markets. The risk management covers three types of risks: financial risks, that is, risks linked to the central government’s debt management and payment system as well as state guarantees and loans; operational risks, that is, risks based on insufficiency in organizational processes, human errors, system fallacies, or external events; and security risks, that is, risks coupled to information and physical security (Riksgälden, 2012). Finansinspektionen is subject to the Swedish Government.

All three agencies have a relatively extensive right of self-determination as the government or the Riksdag has no rights to intervene in an agency’s decisions in specific matters regarding the application of a law or the due exercise of its authority.

Methodology

The analysis rests on a study of the three Swedish governmental agencies covering the period just before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008 and the year to follow. The empirical material is collected through interviews with eight representatives including the director general as well as the head of communication department for each of the three organizations. In addition, one senior manager from Finansinspektionen and one from the Riksbank were interviewed. A press officer from one of the four large banks and a head of investor relations from another were also interviewed to gain a frame of references and a second opinion on the interactions between the agencies and the banks. These interactions were a returning theme during the interviews with the representatives from the agencies.

The interviews were in-depth and semi-structured, and the respondents were asked to describe the activities their organizations carried out due to the financial crises. The answers were followed up with questions covering aim and motives for the activities and priorities made in different kind of situations. The interviews with the respondents from the banks gave priority to their interactions with the agencies but also included questions about the banks’ own activities and the aim and motives of these. The interviews were carried between March and May 2010 and lasted for 45–90 minutes.

In addition to this, press releases and Web updates published by the three agencies as well as speeches held by the directors of the Riksbank (there are six directors including the director general) from September 2008 to August 2009 were collected and analyzed. The other two agencies do not publish speeches on a regular basis; however, some speeches from the director generals were published as Web updates and then included in the corpus. The material was read, and all texts with explicit or implicit connection to the financial crises were culled out. As a supplement, secondary materials have been used for background information including a report from DEMICOM (Johansson and Nord, 2012), a report by Hallvarsson & Halvarsson (2010) (a public relations (PR)-consultancy firm) produced on behalf of The Group for Co-Operation Between Private and Public Actors in the Financial Sector (FSPOS), and a book covering the Riksbank’s work with communication, where one of the six chapters is dedicated to the financial crises (Petrelius Karlberg and Meyersson, 2012). These materials have been used to confirm dates and times, given by the respondents (when they were unsecure or where different accounts were given by respondents). They have also been used for triangulations and as a source of information about actors and events not mentioned during the interviews.

In order to analyze the materials, the transcripts and the texts were read and then organized in four themes: (1) activities, (2) aims, (3) actors, and (4) assumptions/preconditions. Each theme was thereafter inductively divided into mutually exclusive categories. These categories could be ordered in seven temporary forms of institutional maintenance. After further reductions and triangulation using theory and prior research, the seven forms could be reduced to three – providing, policing, and routinizing – used by the three agencies during the financial crisis. All three have been found in earlier studies of institutional maintenance (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Pallas and Fredriksson, 2011).

The financial crises in Sweden

The financial crises became a concern for the Swedish public when Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 15th of September 2008. The event became headlines in all major news media and soon the financial crisis was established as a concept. Earlier, the situation had been described as turbulent and mainly been an issue for the business community (Fredriksson and Danielsson, 2009). Finansinspektionen, Riksbanken, and Riksgälden became primary sources for journalists with increasing media attention as a consequence. The amplified interest lasted for several weeks, but after peak in late October, it falls even though the financial crisis is given extensive attention for several months to come (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The number of articles and radio items including the terms ‘Financial crises’, ‘Finansinspektionen’, ‘the Riksbank’, and ‘Riksgälden’ or variations thereof, in the three main business papers, the three general nationwide newspapers, and the major radio news station in Sweden from January 2007 to December 2009.

The same day as the announcement of the bankruptcy, Handelsbanken and SEB disclose a minor exposure to Lehman Brothers. The day after, Nordea also announces limited exposure, but later that day, Swedbank reveals an extensive engagement in the American bank, equal to Swedish Krona (SEK) 9.3 billion (at that time, 1 SEK was equal to € .10 or $ .14). The market reactions were palpable with increasing volatility and insecurity as a consequence. Soon, shortage of liquidity becomes a major problem, due to the increasing uncertainty many have about the securities offered on the market. As a consequence, the spread (i.e. the difference between the repo rate and the interbank market rate) increases from 75 to more than 350 points (Lybeck, 2009), and on the 18th of September, Riksgälden announces that it will cease its market obligations and stop providing treasury bills due to the shortage of other sellers. The same afternoon, Riksgälden and the Riksbank declare that they will issue large volumes of treasury bills to a worth of maximum SEK 150 billion using covered bonds as securities. This is followed by an agreement between the Riksbank, the central banks of Denmark, Norway, and the United States on the 24th of September, followed up by another agreement in line with the former on the 29th of September. In both cases, the aim is to secure access to liquidity in US dollars. These and other efforts are all made to assure market actors that the authorities will secure the supply of market liquidity for a foreseeable future.

In addition to these activities – aimed for the markets as a system – individual organizations are supported. One among these is the Icelandic bank, Kaupthing bank, with a subsidiary and a branch in Sweden. The day before the Icelandic government declares that it will be nationalized, the Riksbank grants liquidity assistance to its Swedish subsidiary with a loan up to SEK 5 billion to support the bank’s abilities to fulfill its commitments to its Swedish customers. In similar manners, the Riksbank decides to grant liquidity assistance with a loan up to SEK 1 billion to Carnegie Investment Bank AB, one of the smaller banks on the Swedish market. The support is not enough, and the day after the Riksbank decides to increase the loan up to SEK 5 billion. Albeit the support, the turbulence for Carnegie continues – due to the stretched economy but also because of earlier irregularities – and on the 10th of November Finansinspektionen declares that the trade with Carnegies shares is suspended followed by an announcement from Riksgälden later the same day that the bank has been nationalized.

Apart from the agencies’ efforts, the financial crises in Sweden is characterized by speculations about Swedbank’s financial status due to its extensive engagement in Lehman Brothers but also due to large investments on the Baltic markets, all three under strong pressure at the time. SEB has similar exposures, but it is first and foremost Swedbank which has to stand in the searchlight and defend itself. Initially, Swedbank decides not to comment on the situation opening up for speculations about its status, and this is still more amplified by the fact that the three governmental agencies do not comment – due to their policies not commenting on single corporations – on the motives for their support to the financial system as a whole, by some described as a veiled support to Swedbank.

The overall aim of the governmental agencies’ market support is to restore trust. The respondents describe this as the most essential aspect of the markets’ functionality. To restore its properties and social functions the markets’ actors has to re-establish and retain their confidence in each other. Communication is one aspect of this work both as practice in itself but also as a dimension of other activities. The materials analyzed here reveal three different forms of institutional maintenance tied to the organization’s communication activities mobilized by the financial crisis: providing, policing and routinizing.

Providing

Providing is about the protection of certain interests by the presentation of fact and figures supporting an institution’s legal, moral, and ideological foundations. In practice, it means the packaging of information and activities to an appropriate format and at the right time but also to establish and secure relations between an organization, journalists, and other media representatives (Pallas and Fredriksson, 2011). When the financial turbulence turns into a crisis, an almost immeasurable need for information arises. Journalists, professional actors, the public, and others want to know what it was that caused the situation, what effects it can have on international and Swedish conditions, what power of resistance Swedish banks have, and so forth. The agencies responded with press materials, opened up for interviews and updated their Web sites. The overall aim was to secure a steady stream of information and thereby satisfying others’ need for orientation, or as a respondent from an agency says puts it

We answered all questions, we were always available. One night a journalist from Aftonbladet called me at two o’clock and asked me to have a say in one of those ‘Four give their opinion’. Then I didn’t answer, he had to call the day after. But our phones are always … We always answered to questions. (Respondent 1)

In addition to this, Finansinspektionen as well as the Riksbank set up FAQs on their Web sites. The Riksbank also act to change the content of already planned speeches for the representatives of the directory board and to bring about additional speeches where they could address the financial situation. Riksgälden, on the other hand, increased the number of staff in their telephone exchange to be able to handle all queries about their deposit insurance. This is also supported by extended information on the agency’s Web site. The idea of a continuous flow of information – even in situations where there is not anything new to tell – is dominant.

In the short term, the aim is to avoid panic and a bank run which would lead to a fundamental crisis for the markets. But by providing information, the agencies also act to support the moral foundations of the institution, including ideas of its functionality, essential mechanisms, distribution of responsibilities, and its role in society. Essential to this is the creation of a story covering the origin of the crises, its consequences, but first and foremost solutions and the abilities for Swedish banks to handle the crises. Or as it is expressed by a respondent from one of the agencies:

It is very much about creating a story, a trustworthy coherent story…

When you say ‘story’, the selection of words is interesting. One almost thinks about something like a fairy tale?

Yes in that sense that banking is about the future. Banking is about the future in that sense that the depositors are convinced about and believe they will get their money back. You can never know, as individual citizen, how a bank looks inside. It doesn’t work, it is physically impossible. But you can listen to a story about the future that is so that you can believe in it. (Respondent 2)

The accounts are jointly created by the senior management from the three agencies with active support from the Ministry of Finance. The messages are constructed in response to the crisis but are very well anchored in a set of institutionalized grand narratives about the banks’ and the markets’ roles and functions in a capitalistic system and market economy.

The presentation of a coherent story is seen as essential to be apprehended as credible and gain trust. The respondents are convinced that contradictory statements have to be avoided not only by individual organization but also by the three agencies as a collective. The coordination of messages is essential for trustworthiness it is argued, and it is an idea resting in an understanding of oneself as the last resort for the markets stability and functionality. It is assumed that as representatives for the state they all act upon the same mandate, and if they produce an incoherent story or convey different messages, it would be devastating for the markets legitimacy. To be able to reach coherence, the agencies synchronize their announcements and responses. However, as the circumstances change, there is a returning need for new statements, calling for continuing meetings where the new conditions are jointly interpreted and thereafter adopted to the grand story. In most situations, the agencies do the same valuation of arising events or changing circumstances, but this is not to say that they agree on what consequences they will have for the markets or individual actors or how to react. On a number of occasions, there are disagreements about how to respond; whether it is advisable to communicate or not, what to communicate, and when it should take place. But as the agencies give coherence superiority, they all subject themselves to the collective voice and put their individual interests aside, more or less willingly.

The idea of a coherent story is essential for the agencies’ work with communication, and all measures are taken to uphold the preferred descriptions of the situation. The co-operations between the agencies – as well as the Ministry of Finance – is one way to achieve this. However, the agencies are just three voices – competing with others – and therefore this work also includes the monitoring of others. On a regular basis, the agencies analyze media coverage and statements made by other actors. These analyses are often general in their scope, but there are situations when specific actors are given certain attention. One example is when the coverage of Swedbank increases dramatically due to the questioning of its investments in the Baltic region, with an accelerating short selling of its shares as a consequence. The overall aim with the monitoring is to discover what is seen as erroneous information and provide correcting statements. Hence, providing also includes work where the agencies act to counteract information – defined as incorrect or demoralizing – provided by other, including news media, market actors, or official bodies from other countries. This is described by a respondent from one of the agencies:

When Swedish newspapers and other actors on the market thought that the whole Baltic area would go down the drain, we wrote in one of our reports that we didn’t thought so and why we thought so. And when IMF said that Baltikum would cost the Swedish state something equal to six to seven percent of GDP we responded to that as well. (Respondent 3)

The statements are often general in terms and not related to specific issues or specific actors, as the agencies want to avoid distributing information that might influence the markets. However, Finansinspektionen does one exception when Aftonbladet – Sweden’s largest tabloid – publishes an article about the deposit insurance where all information concerning the types of accounts covered by the insurance is inverted. The agency then decides to publish a short press release stating ‘Wrong information in Aftonbladet about the deposit insurance’ (Finansinspektionen, 2 October 2008) followed by a short text not covering more than eight lines, describing the error made by the newspaper.

Policing

Policing includes the use of enforcement, auditing, and monitoring and a wide set of activities where sanctions and inducements are combined to uphold certain activities and obstruct others. Often, it is done by the use of legal – or other formal – incentives and/or penalties (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). Financial markets are extensively regulated, but the authorities have no rights to interfere with other than things that are against regulations. This means that there are strict limitations to what they can do or communicate, as any action taken regarded as market moving will be questioned. Therefore, the agencies are very much restricted to informal means as meetings, telephone calls, and other forms of interpersonal communication if they want to bring pressure to a single organization or a group of organizations. As crisis communication, policing then becomes a form of institutional maintenance where communication is used by the agencies to compel banks, investment funds, and others to show compliance with the strategies they have set up to maintain the financial markets. It is used in different situations but mostly in situations when an individual corporation acts in ways perceived as counteractive for the system as a whole. In these situations, individual interests become secondary as the interests of individual organizations are seen as subordinated to the markets’ functionality.

In contrast to providing, policing is communication aimed for a very limited group of actors, often the four large banks, or in some instances, other groups of actors seen as vital for the markets’ functionality. General knowledge about these activities – or about the information shared at these meeting – is seen as counterproductive or even damaging. Therefore, many of these activities take place behind closed doors and are used when other means are unattainable due to legal restrictions, policy restrictions, or other situational factors or when the agencies want to avoid dissemination of sensitive information.

If the situation is interpreted as more critical – or if the actions taken by individual organizations are seen as more threatening to the institution – the agencies act with increased stress, using the resources they have at hand to obtain control and put pressure on those they think are called for action. One example is when the Riksbank calls to a meeting with representatives from the four large banks and urge them not to take advantage of the situation when other banks are confronted with problems. The background is a campaign where a bank had what they called ‘bank swopping days’. The campaign was not directed toward any specific group of customers, but it took place when the speculations about Swedbank’s financial status were at its peak and the intentions with the campaign were unmistakable.

In other situations, policing is performed under more ordinary conditions and everyday situations as described by one of the respondents from an agency:

We talked to ANONYMOUS, I didn’t do it myself, but there was a communication problem there, to make the market functioning, it was about the domestic bond market and how it should function better. Towards the market in general one could say. But there we did specific efforts to get some of the larger actors into the market. That was the first were I experienced that we had a need for communication. (Respondent 4)

The use of communication as an informal tool to obtain control and govern others to perform or not to perform, communicate or not to communicate is essential to policing. In almost all cases, the activities are directed toward the market’s actors, but there are examples of situations, regarded as exceptional, when others are exposed for these forms of pressure. One example is when a representative from Finansinspektionen contacts the legally responsible publisher of Aftonbladet after the publication of the article about the deposit insurance mentioned above and pushes her to publish a large article the day after with correct information. It could easily be apprehended as inappropriate as the agency goes beyond its mandate, and it is therefore performed with extensive discretion.

Routinizing

Essential to the maintenance of institutions is the establishment of routines as they have a stabilizing function, create structure, and make things foreseeable. That is to say, by actively facilitating the repetition of certain behaviors, actors could infuse the standards of an institution in everyday practices. As a result, the institution’s normative foundations are to a larger extent trusted, taken for granted, and less reflected upon, and thereby the likelihood of institutional stability is increased (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Möllering, 2006).

In line with this, the three agencies give extensive effort to establish procedures for their operations. This includes most activities, but it particularly holds true for their communication. By striving for consistency, long-term planning, and communicating simultaneously to all stakeholders, the agencies want to achieve predictability and functionality. To accomplish this, all agencies have established certain sets of means for communication (press releases, Web updates, reports, speeches, etc.), and each means is used for certain types of messages. The vast majority of messages are released on specific times – following a schedule made public beforehand – or released at specific occasions (i.e. when the license for an organization is withdrawn). The production of messages also undergoes a strict routine. At the Riksbank, a press release is normally published 45 minutes after a decision is made by the directors, every text is controlled by two individuals and both are present when it is published. In addition to this, each agency have dedicated spokespersons for different issues, where the senior manager for a certain field normally represents the organization. These initiatives are taken to create broader and deeper settings in which formal and stable routines permeate the agencies interactions with the media. During the crisis, the three agencies make extensive efforts to uphold these routines and the communication departments do whatever they can to follow trodden paths. The main principles for the distribution of press releases are almost kept intact, reports are published on appointed dates and representatives give speeches and take part in events where they normally would take part, but not in others. In line with the ambition to uphold established routines, the agencies stand by for 3 days after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, before any of them make a public announcement. When it comes, it is a short press release from Riksgälden declaring ‘Riksgälden temporally ceases its market commitments in treasure bills … due to the financial turbulence’ (press release 18th of September) and similar to that the Riksbank announces that there will be ‘Measures to facilitate the market’s functionality’ (press release 18th of September 2008). Both are published by reason of the issuing of treasury bills by Riksgälden. These are the first public announcements where the initiative is taken by the agencies and the detention and the word of choice is representative for how the organizations act to safeguard established routines. None of the agencies do normally make comments on current events using press releases, but here the situation is interpreted as extraordinary and other considerations are given priority (i.e. the need of information). However, the lack of announcements does not mean that the agencies have been passive; it rather means that they have chosen to act in a way that does not diverge to much from ordinary practice. One example is an appearance in national radio when a representative from the Riksbank had been interviewed. The appearances are extensively considered and to be able to uphold established procedures as Riksbanken lets a specialist with designated areas of responsibilities – instead of an executive – to take part. A decision made to preserve the idea of a market functions as normal as it is the customary. Or as one of the respondents describes it

It is always a hard line to draw when you have a communication policy, a strategy and a settled order for when, where and how you do announcements in the media and how we appear. But here it is about, should we respond to media’s demand for now, of a sudden, will it bring alarm or will it convey trust? (Respondent 5)

This is not to say that the agencies do not adapt to the situation. The burden of work increases dramatically, and in many cases, things are done much more often, more rapidly. And in certain situations, they are done in different manners. But much happens backstage and is therefore not observable by others. However, there are situations when the agencies decide to leave established routines noticeable for others as when the Riksbank gives up its schedule for daily updates of its Web site. A few days after Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, it is decided that the frequency ought to be increased from one update a day, excluding weekends, to two updates a day including weekends. These measures – and similar by the other two agencies – are taken to adjust to the increasing pressure from journalists, market actors, and the public, and the idea is to be responsive to an increasing demand for information. However, this does not mean that the idea of routines are forsaken or replaced by ad hoc. Even in a situation when one routine has to be abandoned, it is prompt replaced by another adapted to the situation and safeguarded all throughout the crisis. Later on, when the situation is regarded as stable, the old routine is put back in operation.

Much effort is made by the agencies to uphold established routines even though the work backstage are changed and adapted to the situation. Most of it has been done before the crisis as it is then that the communication departments are organized and the assignments are distributed. The work at the three communication departments are all – more or less – organized with regard to extraordinary situations. The idea is to shape roles, structures, and routines that are persistent to the kind of stress the organization will encounter during a crisis or other situations where the organization has to handle issues or matters without foreseeable consequences. According to one respondent from an agency

One shouldn’t have a number of routines during a crisis one don’t have in normal cases but one should build a communication machinery that is capable to handle a crisis, because when it is crisis you don’t have the time to think about a whole a lot of pages about crisis it should function as it does under normal circumstances. (Respondent 6)

The dominating idea is that there is no absolute boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Rather than a dichotomy between two modes (not crisis/crisis), situations are seen as more or less acute. It is therefore argued that rather than creating different routines for different situations, the agencies are better off if they create roles, structures, and routines that are less dependent on external preconditions. Here, the agencies put forward the role of training as an essential tool to establish certain routines and behaviors and be able to keep them sustainable and resistible in different kind of situations. All agencies are members of national and international networks – with corporations and governmental agencies from other fields as additional members – organizing training letting the agencies expose their routines for different kind of situations and evaluate their functionality.

Discussion: Crisis communication for the reproduction of established orders

I began this article with an assumption that some types of crisis communication can be characterized as forms of work that in combination with other practices are aimed for the maintenance of institutions. The results I have presented point out three forms of crisis communication: providing, policing, and routinizing, and even if they are diverse in their scope, performance, and appearance, I would argue that it is reasonable to characterize them as institutional work; as they all are intentional and aimed for the reproduction of already established orders (i.e. institutions), rather than habitual or intended for organizational benefits (Lawrence et al., 2009b; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).

The overall intention with the communicative work was to maintain the financial markets and their functionalities. It is made explicit by the respondents, and it is supported by the written materials the three organizations produced at the time being. By the distribution of information, being active in response to questions and inquiries, by putting pressure to main actors on the markets and by upholding routines and avoid extraordinary activities, the agencies were trying to counteract the effects of an increasing complexity and insecurity among the markets’ constituencies. In contrast to the mechanical execution of behavior that makes institutions sustainable under ordinary conditions (Greenwood et al., 2008), these activities were performed purposefully with institutional effects in mind (Lawrence et al., 2009b). Even if most activities aimed for effects on actors the actors themselves were of less importance. That is to say that when the agencies provided information to journalists, market actors, the public, and others, they never took individual actors and their interests under consideration. The information was about to help individuals to safeguard their savings and help banks as well other organizational actors to manage their operations during the crisis. However, these effects were just means to bring about support and confidence for the financial markets and escape a bank run. Such a movement was seen as devastating as it would mean institutional failure, especially on a market with such a high concentration as the Swedish.

The agencies activities were mobilized by several contextual factors, but the motives for them to act are first and foremost to be found in their formal assignments. All three organizations have been established to regulate, control, and/or defend the markets and its mechanisms. With that assignment come rather extensive privileges and resources whereby the legislators want to increase the agencies abilities to be successful (DiMaggio, 1988; Hoffman, 1999). However, the legislators do not provide the agencies with instructions on how to execute their doings; this is up to the management to decide. So rather than legal instructions, the choice to communicate and how to execute it is a result of other social conditions. To some extent, these conditions are articulated and used as frame of reference when activities are considered and staged. As when the agencies decide to have informal meetings with bank representatives to circumvent their limited possibilities to put pressure on individual organizations, due to the policies that prevent them from making comments on individual organizations in public. In other situations, the conditions are much less obvious as they have become institutionalized and thereby taken for granted. As when the three agencies submit to and give priority to the idea of a coherent story about the crisis reasons, consequences, and solutions. This idea is not negotiable even if it creates tensions between the three agencies and even if it is practically impossible to obtain (Fredriksson and Pallas, 2014; Christensen et al., 2008; Scott, 2008).

Contributions, limitations, and future research

This study shows the dynamics of crisis communication and offers insights into how crisis communication is performed when it is aimed for the maintenance of institutions. Hence, it contributes to the work already undertaken using a neo-institutional approach to describe, explain and understand the activities, processes and dynamics of public relations in general (cf. Frandsen and Johansen, 2011; Fredriksson and Pallas, 2014; Fredriksson, Pallas and Wehmeier 2013; Kjeldsen, 2013; Merkelsen, 2013; Pallas and Fredriksson, 2011; 2013; Sandhu, 2009) and crisis communication more specifically (Frandsen and Johansen, 2009; Fredriksson, Olsson and Pallas, 2013). More precise, my study offers three main contributions to the field.

First of all it points out the importance of seeing crisis communication as an activity embracing a wide range of practices. As the results from this study show, the agencies undertook a number of different activities where communication was at heart, and it is clear that the organizations see all types of communication as interlinked with each other. This means that even informal meeting with a rather small – but significant – group of people becomes a part of the agencies crisis communication. It is also clear that these activities are nested in other types of activities making it difficult or even irrelevant to make a clear and absolute distinction between communication and other types of activities. To single out strategic stance, rhetorical strategy or reputational threat as the object for analyses would therefore mislead the results. By opening up for a more holistic approach, this study helps us to better understand the role of different forms of communication in times of crisis and to what extent communication is given priority, when it is seen as secondary what forms it takes and what roles it is given and how these aspects interrelate to other aspects and practices.

Second, this study shows that crisis communication can be an activity used by organizations to reach beyond aims and goals that is tied to the particular organization or other actors. During the type of crisis analyzed here, it becomes clear that the work performed by the three agencies is not executed to restore or amplify the organizations’ reputation or trust, neither is it performed to safeguard the interests of individual citizens or organizations. All these aspects are taken into reconsideration, but they are secondary, and they are first and foremost means to gain the overall goal of maintaining the financial markets. This shows that we have to expand already established understandings of the aims and goals of communication activities performed by organizations in times of crises and that social as well as organizational conditions have to be taken into account.

A third contribution from this study is that it shows how crisis communication – as other forms of communication – is institutionally embedded and to a large extent governed by legal, normative, and mimetic conditions. The results I present demonstrate that the communicative work performed by the organizations is to a large extent mobilized by social conditions. It is also clear that the influences of these conditions are reinforced due to the uncertainty that the crisis evolves. As the involved actors are uncertain and unsecure about the crisis consequences, they tend to amplify already established patterns of behaviors.

That said, it has to be pointed out that all forms of crisis communication are not to be defined as institutional maintenance or that institutional maintenance can be limited to (crisis) communication, a reminder that points toward some limitations of this study. One is that the financial crisis was a very specific type of crisis with economical as well as political consequences on a global level. There are few other examples of crisis with such extensive propagation, and it is therefore more difficult to place the results in relation to others and form a more certain statement of its bearing for other types of crisis. Another shortcoming is that the three organizations studied here have formal assignments to support the financial markets. It is therefore difficult to have any more specific saying about the motives – apart from coercive – for organizations to use communication as institutional maintenance in times of crisis. In addition, the highly concentrated market structure in Sweden is something to take into account when the results are to be understood.

From this, it is suggested that future research on crisis communication as institutional maintenance would gain from analyses of another types of crisis where other types of values are at stake and where the legal regulation is less far-reaching. It is also important to find cases where the institutions’ protectors are mobilized by normative and/or cognitive rather than legal aspects. By doing this we would be able to get a better and more complete understanding of the conditions governing crisis communication and how actors relate to these. We would also gain better knowledge about what it is that motivates organizations to use (crisis) communication as a form of institutional maintenance and in what types of situations this is more or less likely to occur.

Apart from its contribution to crisis communication theory, such an approach would also open up for contributions to neo-institutional theory and to more general theories of organizing. As it has been pointed out by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) ‘We clearly need to focus more attention on the ways in which institutions reproduce themselves. Indeed, this may be a more fundamental question for institutional research, in many respects than the question of how institutions are created’. (p.234) and research on crisis communication can contribute with rich understandings of communication activities in organizational contexts – that is, undertakings that are essential for all institutional processes (Fredriksson, Pallas and Wehmeier, 2013).

Conclusion

To conclude, I would argue that the empirical and theoretical insights that emerge from this study manifest the importance of including institutional conditions in our analyses of crisis communication. Thereby, we open up for a wider understanding of the circumstances under which crisis communication is practiced, and thus we overcome the limitations of many earlier analyses where actors are seen as rational self-determinant agents with extensive liberty of action. This will help us understand the conditions under which crisis communication is carried out, and in doing so, it will allow researchers and practitioners to have a realistic stance on the limitations and possibilities of communication in times of crises.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mats Hallvarsson founding partner of Hallvarsson & Halvarsson and Professor Lars Nord at Mid Sweden University for letting me use some of their materials for this study.

Funding

This study was funded by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.

Author biography

Magnus Fredriksson, PhD, is associate professor at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Gothenburg and by the time when this study was completed visiting scholar at the Department of Media and Informatics, Uppsala University, both in Sweden. His research interests encompass corporate identity, corporate media work, and crisis communication, examining issues of mediatization, institutionalization, and other structural conditions for these activities. He was the co-editor of a special section on public relations and neo-institutional theory in Public Relations Inquiry and has also published in the European Journal of Communication and Journal of Communication Management among others.

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