Anticipating the unknown: Crisis communication while under investigation

Abstract

The cause of a crisis may have to be reidentified when, during the aftermath of the crisis, new insights come to light in the accident reports. The possible reassignment of responsibility for a crisis complicates the suitable choice of an appropriate crisis response strategy that is ultimately intended to optimize reputational protection. This article describes how this phenomenon should be taken into account and suggests an ‘acknowledge and await’ response strategy for situations in which organizations prefer to respond with care and not jump to conclusions before the outcomes of an investigation are known.

Keywords

Accountability blame crisis communication disasters framing

Introduction

On 29 September 2016, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) started an investigation into the New Jersey Transit commuter rail crash at Hoboken station. A 34-year-old woman, who had been standing on the platform, died in the accident and another 100 people were injured. In his initial response, New Jersey Transit Executive Director Steven Santoro said that trains entering the station were reducing their approach speed from 10 to 5 mph for added safety. Reducing the speed was regarded to be necessary in order to prevent future incidents. One month later, a new possible cause came to light, as the board suspended 11 train workers under a fatigue rules program. According to the new reports, the driver suffered from undiagnosed sleep apnea, which was an additional factor contributing to the terrible events on 29 September 2016. In early February 2018, the NTSB (2018) issued a Special Investigation Report and confirmed sleep apnea to be a contributing cause, stating:

Contributing to the accident was New Jersey Transit’s failure to follow its internal obstructive sleep apnea screening guidance and refer at-risk safety-sensitive personnel for definitive obstructive sleep apnea testing and treatment. Further contributing to the accident was the Federal Railroad Administration’s failure to require railroads to medically screen employees in safety-sensitive positions for obstructive sleep apnea and other sleep disorders. Also contributing to the accident was the lack of either a device or safety system that could have intervened to stop the train before the collision. (p.2)

Aftermaths of incidents like the one at Hoboken are not unique. Organizations such as New Jersey Transit are often subject to incident investigations by independent committees or boards. Investigations like this come with a special kind of uncertainty, which is inherent in any crisis and challenges the capacity of public relations practitioners to know how to best proceed (Liu et al., 2016). As soon as investigation committees come aboard, uncertainty surrounds the future verdict on the organizational responsibility for the cause of the crisis.

In her study on media coverage of chemical incidents, Holladay (2010) finds 39 out of 91 cases where the accident is still under investigation. As responsibility for a crisis is regarded as the starting point for communication strategies, this brings difficulties in deciding on the most appropriate crisis response strategy, for as long as the verdict is unknown. While stakeholders most likely start to use their influence to alter dominant perceptions of what happened and who acted decisively and appropriately after the incident (Kuipers and ’t Hart, 2014), the organization under investigation is sailing in unchartered waters. It is supposed to anticipate the future outcome of an accident report, which is unknown to the organization shortly after the crisis.

In order to support organizations in anticipating an unknown outcome, the goals of this article are as follows: (1) to define and extend our understanding of the process of being under investigation in a crisis aftermath, (2) to discuss the impact of known crisis response strategies under such a situation, and (3) to make recommendations for when an organization should and should not anticipate the final report.

First, a review is given of the literature on the characteristics of investigations after crises. Then, the options in terms of crisis communication responses are described. The distinction is made between a regular crisis aftermath, and the impact of a final report of an investigation committee as a potential ‘game changer’ in perceptions. Finally, an outline is given for a new approach of ‘acknowledge and await’. Even though the proposed approach has elements of common sense, a theoretical light is shed on why crisis communication during an investigation differentiates itself from regular communication in the aftermath of crises. The approach supports communication practitioners who might otherwise underestimate the potential impact of investigation reports on existing and future perceptions.

Characteristics of being under investigation

Questions about responsibility and accountability surface as soon as reports are presented. According to Boin et al. (2016), these are the times when revisionist interpretations of the causes, the quality of the response, and the management of the wider repercussions get airplay in the media. Due to the reporting, the crisis returns to political and institutional agendas, in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘crisis after the crisis’ (Boin and Smith, 2006), which is full of ‘blame games’ that potentially erode the reputation of the parties involved.

As Parker and Dekker (2008) note, investigation committees are interpretive authorities, which provide an accepted ritualized procedure for making sense of traumatic events. Through accountability, crises can make, break, or transform political and public service careers, agency mandates, and reputations (Kuipers and ’t Hart, 2014). Sigurgeirsdóttir and Johnsen (2018) refer to the Icelandic Parliamentary Special Investigation Commission which conducted a ground-breaking crisis-induced investigation, delivering a report that was ‘a milestone in Iceland’s history of politics and public administration’. Such milestones with large public impact are not unique. Usually, reports by investigation committees are not ‘just another opinion’ but are presented as an independent verdict on the role of the organization in a certain crisis. The committees assign responsibility, discuss policy matters, and propose corrective solutions in a way that contributes to the development of meaning (Parker and Dekker, 2008). Committees are even expected to do so. In the case of the MS Estonia disaster (1994), the final report from the Finnish, Swedish, and Estonian investigation committee was criticized over the years, most likely because of the disappointing concluding remark that ‘No one was found officially responsible’ (Radio Sweden, 2014). As such, the presentation of the final accident report is usually the moment the committee publicly and with authority approves or disapproves of the crisis management and the communication of the parties involved.

External investigation

Organizations under investigation usually acknowledge the expertise of these external investigative bodies, which implies that the opinion of an investigation committee is able to fundamentally change public perceptions of the cause of incidents and the associated responsibilities. In addition to their authority, investigative bodies tend to take their time for research and in-depth studies. Often, it takes months or even years of investigation before underlying causes come to light. The investigative report into Hurricane Katrina, for example, was presented on 15 February 2006, which was half a year after the hurricane had hit the coast of Louisiana (United States House of Congress, 2006). The Transportation Safety Board of Canada submitted its report about the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster 13 months after the accident (Currie-Mueller, 2017). The US NTSB often needs an even longer timeframe before it publicly discloses its findings and new insights that were initially unknown to the organization, the public, and media. During all those months, the investigation looks for clues in the interaction between actors. The larger and more severe in magnitude and negative consequences a crisis is, the greater the number of actors (Palttala et al., 2012) and the interactions between these actors will all be under investigation.

Organizational learning

Moreover, investigation committees tend to approach crises from a specific angle and take organizational learning as a starting point. They look beyond the obvious and ask themselves whether or not multiple causes have added up to an inevitable accident. As most crises flow from unique configurations of individual error, organizational failure, and environmental flux (Rosenthal et al., 2001), the number of potential causes can be tremendous. The report on the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise (1987) owned by Townsend Thoresen explains how different factors add up to a fatal disaster (Ek et al., 2014; Jacobsson and Ek Akselsson, 2011; Price, 2015). The capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise occurred just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge and resulted in the loss of 193 lives. The ship was a roll-on/roll-off ferry, a design that enables rapid loading and unloading at the harbors along the English Channel. After arrival at Zeebrugge, the assistant bosun (a ship’s officer) opened the bow door and went to his cabin, where he fell asleep. It was his duty to close the bow doors at the time of departure from Zeebrugge, a duty he failed to carry out. According to the formal investigation, the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized because she went to sea with her inner and outer bow doors open, whereas they should have been closed at departure (United Kingdom Department of Transport, 1987). The sea immediately flooded the deck, which led to the sinking of the ferry. While the open bow door was the primary cause of the ferry disaster, the official inquiry also pointed to underlying patterns as well, and put blame on the supervisors, on the fact that the officer did not wake on the harbor station’s call for departure, and on the fact that there was no indicator on the bridge to show the current state of the bow doors. Moreover, with regard to the culture within Townsend Thoresen, time pressure was common practice. The lack of an overall safety culture contributed even further to the development of the situation and was an overall contributor to the terrible events of 6 March 1987. None of these factors came close to the initial statement by Townsend Thoresen, whose spokesperson conjectured that the ship hit the harbor wall (Clark, 2014). Even though this might be accurate according to his information about the situation shortly after the fatal incident, it shows that the underlying causes only came to light in the final report which was presented months later, but were not available at the time of the initial statement.

Impact of investigation committees

In summary, an investigation by an independent and external committee implies that (1) it potentially takes months before a report will be presented, (2) the final outcome will be presented with authority, (3) the final outcome can be regarded as a verdict on crisis responsibilities, and (4) the final outcome may contradict earlier perceptions on the responsibility for the crisis of the organization(s) involved.

Crisis response strategies in the aftermath of crises

The responsibility for a crisis is the cornerstone of crisis response strategies (Park and Len-Ríos, 2010). Benoit (1995) already claimed that crises become a threat to reputations when an individual or organization is accused of being responsible for the offensive act. In other words, if there is no offensive act or no accusation of responsibility for the act, there is no reputational threat (Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 2010). In his Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), Coombs (2010, 2015) argues that the nature of a crisis situation shapes audience perceptions and attributions when it comes to crisis responsibility. He defines three types of crises: the victim cluster (low crisis responsibility/low reputational threat), accidental cluster (minimal crisis responsibility/minimal reputational threat), and preventable cluster (strong crisis responsibility/strong reputational threat) (Coombs, 2010: 39).

In the end, stakeholders value the reputation of an organization on the basis of perceived crisis responsibility, together with crisis history, relationship history, and prior reputation (Coombs, 1998, 2007). These perceptions define what needs to be done and whether to choose a frame of being a victim (Coombs, 2007). Depending on the threat level, current theory proposes different response strategies. In the case of reputational threat, the theory emphasizes apologizing and accepting responsibility for crises as the primary communicative recommendation (Benoit and Pang, 2008).

A drawback of current crisis response strategies is the presumption in the literature that crisis responsibilities are rather static. Even though environmental scanning is set up in order to look for changes and forecast changes in perceptions (Narayanan and Fahey, 1987), SCCT tends to be most useful as long as an organization does not change from one cluster to another. As crises can morph and change over time, the alternative for organizations under crisis is to switch between strategies. This, however, tends to undermine the credibility of the organization. Benoit (2018) gives the example of CEO Munoz of United Airlines, who felt forced to enact a makeover of his crisis response and thereby implicitly confirmed that the initial response was ineffectual. His new position was the right one, according to Benoit (2018), but it came too late to prevent further damage to the company.

Similar to the example of United Airlines, response strategies can easily go wrong when clusters and responsibilities for the crisis were judged inappropriately before a committee presented its findings, even in cases where erroneous statements were not made intentionally. As Coombs (2010) states, the reported cause could raise a new round of concerns for the organization that demand a response and an organization must deliver all the ‘promised’ information. However, this bears a risk when incidents turn out to be in a different cluster than expected. For example, when it turns out that the cause of a fatal accident is different from what was initially communicated, one might find oneself not in the ‘victim cluster’ but in the ‘preventable cluster’. Initially blaming a contractor (‘victim cluster’) when the final report shows that it was the company’s own fault (‘preventable cluster’) is just one example of the type of communication that can have a potential negative impact on reputation and erode its credibility.

Adkins (2010) adds an analysis of FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, whose response initially indicated it as a response to a natural disaster, falling within the victim cluster of crisis types. When eventually it became clear that FEMA was accused of misdeeds in responding to the disaster, the tenets of SCCT became impossible to apply; responses that would be recommended in the disaster phase prove to be contradictory to those of the resultant crisis phase (Adkins, 2010).

Oftentimes, crises cannot be regarded as the sole responsibility of just one organization. In its report on the Lac-Mégantic runaway train and derailment, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSBC, 2014) identified 18 distinct causes and contributing factors to the incident. The incident was not caused by one single person, action, or organization; it occurred due to a combination of factors influencing one another. This suggests that responsibilities can be re-arranged across network partners in the aftermath of crises as well. When the change in responsibilities results in changing perceptions among stakeholders, the crisis team and stakeholders may disagree on the type of crisis at hand. If this is the case, the stakeholder’s frame should be adopted (Coombs, 2007). The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina shows, however, that organizations are not always aware of their biases and the gap between their own and stakeholders’ perceptions (Martinko et al., 2009).

Communication while under investigation

A response strategy is needed that enables organizations to anticipate changing estimates of the initial responsibility in times of crisis. This change in perceptions is a potential ‘game-changer’, compared to regular and incremental changes in the aftermath of crises, when stakeholders, customers, or media come up with new and additional information. This happens for two reasons: (1) the reports by external committees are brought with authority and (2) investigation committees look beyond the obvious and examine all the underlying factors in a chain of events that ended in an incident. This combination of factors makes it hard to anticipate the conclusions of a future investigation report that is full of what former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously called ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ (United States Department of Defense, 2002). Even in organizations that strive to detect known risks before they become manifest and cause trouble, it can be rather complicated to find the causes of incidents. Even in such risk-aware organizations, early signals may simply be put aside, as the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle (1986) and the Fukushima incident (2013) demonstrated (Boin et al., 2016).

Bridge current and future perceptions

Shortly after crises, stakeholders expect an early response. Crisis communication theory suggests the need for a quick response and urges organizations to give guidance in answering that seemingly simple question: ‘how could this have happened?’ This applies to both corporate and public organizations. Regarding corporations, it is imperative that the CEO steps up to deliver a public statement to calm the situation and portray the organization as in control (Lucero et al., 2009). Regarding public organizations, public leaders should explain the crisis, its consequences and what is being done to minimize these consequences (Boin et al., 2013; Coombs, 2007; Jong, 2017). This challenge continues when the dominant frames of crisis situations change with time. Whenever new information about possible causes becomes publicly available, the frames might shift and urge the organization to alter its crisis communication response. This is certainly true for crises with a political context, which cast long shadows that often have a long political aftermath (’t Hart and Boin, 2001).

Existing crisis response strategies show weaknesses in their ability to bridge potential gaps between the perception shortly after the crisis (the initial responsibility) and future perceptions, based on the final report of an investigation committee (final responsibility). The difficulty of response strategies while an incident is still under investigation lies in the ‘unknowns’. One feels the need to respond, although one might not want to jump to conclusions. At the same time, organizations should not neglect evolving perceptions regarding their role in a crisis. One must realize that statements will backfire when these do not align, for example when a positive spin is followed by a harsh truth (Mullin, 2003).

On September 28, 2014, an accident occurred during a monster truck show in Haaksbergen, The Netherlands: three people were killed when a monster truck ploughed into a crowd of onlookers. The Dutch Safety Board investigated the incident. During the investigation, the mayor stated that he would once again have granted the permit for the monster truck show. When the final investigation was presented, the mayor attacked some of the main conclusions in the report, thereby attacking the independent verdict of the Board. During the meeting of the city council where the report was discussed, he had to step down as the council lost confidence. The council confirmed the general conclusions drawn by the Dutch Safety Board. The formal response of the mayor backfired and was not enough to regain public confidence. (Meerenburgh and van Duin, 2015)

This subsequently begs the question as to how an organization can respond to and anticipate in accordance with the situation, when the outcome of in-depth investigations is still unknown. Ideally, the response bridges the current collective and emotional impact of the crisis in terms of perception, while also delaying accountability for the responsibility until the final investigation report is published.

A more dynamic crisis response strategy is needed, which enables the organization under crisis to swiftly adapt to changing perceptions. In order to maintain reliability to stakeholders, even a drastic change in crisis response should be trustworthy. In this case, there is a need for a crisis response strategy that keeps pace with changing perceptions, but does not undermine earlier statements made, nor erodes earlier reputations.

Acknowledge and await

In order to anticipate future ‘unknowns’, a crisis response strategy of ‘acknowledge and await’ is proposed. In this strategy, the organization anticipates a future outcome that is unknown to both the organization and its stakeholders. Ideally, the strategy anticipates the potential situation that the final outcome of a report might have a fundamentally different perception of the responsibility for the crisis.

The strategy basically consists of acknowledging the crisis at hand, and taking responsibility for the initial cause, but also asking and thanking stakeholders for their patience in waiting for the future outcome of any investigation. The organization explains it will fully co-operate with the investigation committee in order to find answers to the existing, burning questions of the victims, media, stakeholders, and the organization itself. As such, it acknowledges the questions that stakeholders have, but waits to answer them until the investigation report is published. In other words, the organization under crisis buys time.

Below, the two components of this strategy, acknowledge and await, are described in more detail.

Acknowledge

Acknowledgement is twofold. First, it enables the organization under crisis to address the emotional impact of the crisis among victims and stakeholders. Second, the strategy acknowledges the authority of the investigation committee, and shows respect for the committee’s final judgment, while convincing stakeholders to trust the committee in its future final opinion. Overall, it acknowledges that a crisis occurred and that the organization is doing the best it can to prevent such crises from happening again. Meanwhile, this acknowledgement still shows that the organization gives priority to emotional and psychosocial support, and that political blame games get a lower priority at the moment of crisis. Compared to taking full responsibility (or the opposite, full denial), acknowledgement is also a scalable way of taking responsibility. Feeling responsible for a situation can be anything between a low and high level of responsibility, while being responsible is either full or none. As such, acknowledgement enables the organization to anticipate future reports, since it can show that it feels responsible, while the exact level of responsibility will be determined later on. Moreover, acknowledgement paves the way for the public display of empathy, compassion, solidarity, and reassurance, which are all important response categories in the accountability process (Kuipers and ’t Hart, 2014).

Await

The await component explicitly anticipates the final conclusions of the investigation committee. It does not mean that the organization under crisis is silenced, but that it communicates with restraint. The strategy gives direction toward when and how more clarity on the events that led to the crisis can be expected. Restraint is needed, because responding to an investigation in progress might leave the impression that the organization is already trying to spin and frame the crisis before the conclusion of the investigation. However, not responding while under investigation might give the impression of being non-communicative, while stakeholders will not wait until the report is presented. An insufficient response can easily lead to what Johansen and Frandsen (2007) call a double crisis, where the handling of communication creates a new crisis in itself (2010, 2016). To prevent a double crisis from happening, the concerns of the stakeholders can be addressed by taking note of their questions and making the promise that all of their questions will be answered as soon as the independent report is published:

The Enschede fireworks disaster on May 13, 2000, involved a fire in a fireworks factory in the city of Enschede, The Netherlands. The fire led to a catastrophic explosion of fireworks that killed 23 people. The incumbent mayor, Jan Mans, used a strategy of ‘acknowledge and await’. Even though he realized that the permits had allowed a fireworks factory to be built in a densely populated area, he managed to postpone discussions on his mayoral responsibilities. He made the priority his own citizens and the victims of the disaster. He supported them with care, and attended memorials and funerals. The mayor said that, regardless of the outcome of the final report, he felt responsible. ‘But’, he explicitly said, ‘we will not put ourselves on the rack till we have the results of the investigation’ (Mans, 2001). Locally and nationally the mayor was seen as a hero, and in the aftermath of the crisis, the Dutch Association of Municipalities awarded the mayor the Municipal Prize for his exemplary role (Noordegraaf and Newman, 2011). When the final investigation report was presented, the city discussed the issue of responsibility. The mayor politically survived and did not have to resign. His subsequent image evolved into that of a ‘crisis mayor’. (Helsloot and Groenendaal, 2017)

While organizations might be tempted to respond to alleged crisis responsibilities right away, one should not underestimate the potential long-term and negative effects in terms of reputational damage. The proposed strategy of ‘acknowledge and await’ asks crisis communication practitioners to weigh short-term benefits versus long-term gains (Claeys and Coombs, 2019; Coombs and Tachkova, 2019). Where a rapid response in the short run might enable the organization to shift perceptions in the preferred direction, it should not make things worse when the cause of the crisis turns out to be different from what was initially expected.

Using ‘acknowledge and await’ does not mean that stakeholders will be silenced. As Cheng (2018) argued, stakeholders may also develop their own crisis responses ranging from emotional support, information seeking, remediation, rectification to diverting attention. It implies that stakeholders might increase their pressure on the organization under crisis during the time it ‘awaits’. Also, new media are used to find information and to provide information to others as well (Stephens and Malone, 2009).

‘Acknowledge and await’, however, prepares the organization to respond to changing perceptions over time. In its effect, it can be expected that ‘acknowledge and await’ shows similarities to the strategy of stealing thunder (Coombs, 2014). This crisis response strategy demonstrates that when it is the organization itself that first reports a crisis, it suffers less damage compared to situations where an outside source, such as the news media, is the first to report it. As the organization which applies ‘acknowledge and await’ already ‘acknowledges’ the existence of a crisis situation, it makes itself less vulnerable. In the short run, the organization does not hide. In the long run, it shows that it dares to wait for the final outcome of the investigation, and has patience to find and implement all the future lessons to be learnt.

In order to shorten the time span during which the organization is silenced and to prevent an additional crisis in the period of awaiting, an organization can start its own parallel, internal investigation. An internal investigation gives the communications department an indication of whether or not one’s own procedures were effective and might give the conclusions of the final report a soft landing. The findings help the organization to anticipate the final outcomes of the official committee’s investigation. In this way, the organization can share its preliminary findings with victims, media, and stakeholders before the final report is presented. Using the internal investigation diminishes the impact of the final investigation, as long as the conclusions and recommendations are presented as preliminary and the internal investigation looks beyond the obvious. Only then does the organization show that it acknowledges its stakeholders and takes care of the interests of all parties involved. In terms of crisis response, this is the most credible approach to show that the organization commits itself to learning and is ready for the process of renewal (Seeger and Sellnow, 2016; Sellnow and Seeger, 2013), anticipating the final verdict of the external investigation committee.

The question remains what an organization should do when the pressure builds up and when, during an investigation, the public asks for compensations and other proactive actions. Again, the answer lies in the ‘acknowledge’ part of the strategy. Acknowledgement enables the organization to show that it feels responsible, regardless of being responsible. Even though the organization under crisis supports compensations and other proactive actions because it feels a responsibility toward victims, their families, and other stakeholders, it can stick to the policy that the exact level of responsibility will be determined later on.

Further research

Further research is suggested to explore the consequences of an ‘acknowledge and await’ approach and to explore when the benefits of using this strategy are stretched to the limit. Are there any dangers to ‘acknowledge and await’ in an endless cycle, as the presentation of some final investigation reports might take more than a year? How should one cope with in-depth reports by news media, which present an objective overview and reconstruction of the circumstances under which a crisis occurred, prior to a final investigation report? Does an internal investigation minimize the short-term impact of such media reports? Such research builds upon the findings of Coombs and Tachkova (2019) and their distinction between short-term effects and long-term gains. This distinction and balance between short- and long-term effects in crisis communication theory would be a welcome topic for further research, in order to enrich our understanding of the potential diminishing effects of expected long-term reputational gains.

Conclusion

Responding to a crisis with an outspoken response strategy can harm an organization when investigation committees find underlying causes that, even when unknown to the organization, are part of its sphere of influence. While Boin et al. (2016) state that public authorities will have to engage with the media and external stakeholders to get their definition of the situation across in a framing context, this should not automatically apply to the communication frame about responsibility. Communication on crisis-related responsibility should be handled with care, as long as investigation committees have not finished their work. In responding to a crisis, the spokesperson at the scene should realize that the possible outcome of a future accident report could backfire when initial and future statements do not align.

Current crisis response strategies make the assumption that crisis responsibilities are rather static, while incident reports show that perceived crisis responsibilities can change dramatically during the aftermath of a crisis. Perceptions can morph in the aftermath of crises, requiring changing responses over time. Also, organizations can find themselves in situations of shared responsibility, while crisis communication theory still tends to adopt a single responsibility point of view.

Thus far, crisis communication literature has mainly focused on a corporate setting, where protecting reputation and brand value is key. In their study on crisis communication during natural disasters, Waymer and Heath (2007) already pointed to such a ‘managerial bias’ in crisis communication research. In their meta-analysis on 30 years of crisis communication strategy, Arendt et al. (2017) discussed 110 peer-reviewed articles underscoring research on apologia, crisis communication, and image repair. Their meta-analysis confirms that current research in crisis communication seems to be highly skewed toward American, reputational case studies (Arendt et al., 2017), where organizations adopt response strategies and reframe their crisis responsibility in order to protect their brands.

Taking such crisis response strategies for granted, might give practitioners the false impression that a prompt response on perceived responsibility is always key. The current study claims that in certain cases, it would be preferred for an organization under crisis to not rush to make things worse. As discussed, the responsibility does not always fall on only one organization and can often be shared among stakeholders where single interests compete with the interests of the entire industry. Moreover, one can think of situations where governmental agencies are held responsible for crises caused by others (Jong, 2017) as well as situations where there are other communication goals than image repair alone (Jong et al., 2016).

Contrary to Seeger’s (2006) suggestion, this implies that there are circumstances under which acknowledging uncertainty should be used as a strategy. The proposed response of ‘acknowledge and await’ explores the characteristics of changing perceptions on crisis responsibility in the aftermath of crises. It presents an initial response strategy to anticipate changing responsibilities. The proposed strategy explicitly bridges the gap between current and future perceptions. Such a strategy is needed to cope with cause-related uncertainty and to acknowledge the impact that a crisis has for society, while it is still unclear whether or not the organization can expect to receive the blame (or parts of blame) when the investigation report is finally presented. The response strategy prevents organizations from jumping to conclusions about future investigation outcomes, thereby safeguarding the credibility and reputation of the organization under crisis in both the short and the long run.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Wouter Jong

Author biography

Wouter Jong is a PhD student at Tilburg University and a full-time crisis consultant at the Dutch Association of Mayors. His research focuses on public leadership during crises. He is a lecturer in Crisis Communication at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs at Leiden University. He is also the 2017 prize winner of the International Top Student Paper Award at the International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference at the Nicholson School of the University of Central Florida.

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