Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Types of Crisis | Categories of Crises (Lerbinger, Coombs)

In his book "The Crisis Manager: Facing Risk and Responsibility" (1997), Otto Lerbinger distinguishes seven categories of crisis:
  1. Natural crises: earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, storms, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis, droughts.
  2. Technological crises: oil spills at see, industrial accidents, software failures
  3. Confrontation crisis: boycotts, blockades, occupation of buildings, disobeying
  4. Crises of Malevolence: kidnapping, espionage, terrorism, tampe bringing with products
  5. Crises of skewed management values: crises of deception, crises of management misconduct
  6. Crises of deception
  7. Crisis of management misconduct
In his book "Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding" (2007), Coombs mentions nine types of crises:
  1. Natural disasters
  2. Malevolence
  3. Technical breakdowns
  4. Human breakdowns
  5. Challenges
  6. Megadamage
  7. Organizational misdeeds
  8. Workplace violence
  9. Rumors