Internal Crisis Communication

Mats Heide is professor in strategic communication at Lund University. He is coauthor of Strategic Communication (with Jesper Falkheimer, Routledge 2018) and co-editor of Strategic Communication, Social Media and Democracy (Routledge 2016). Heide has published 12 books in Swedish on internal communication, crisis communication and strategic communication.Charlotte Simonsson is senior lecturer in strategic communication at Lund University. She is former head of the Department of Strategic Communication at Lund University and has a career as a communication consultant. Simonsson has published several books in Swedish on internal communication, leadership and organizational communication.

• About the authors, Foreword, Introduction, Large focus on the external perspective, The important internal perspective, Something exceptional or integrated into development? Case organization, Target group for the book, Chapters of the book, 1 Crises and communication, Crises, Organizations and crises, Crisis management, Overconfidence in crisis plans, Phases of a crisis and previous research in crisis communication, 2 Perspectives on crises and crisis communication, Perspectives in research, Approaches in practice, 3 Internal crisis communication, What is internal crisis communication? Previous research on internal crisis communication—an overview The employees—a special and important actor, The goals of internal crisis communication, Different phases require different types of internal communication, 4 Leaders and coworkers—perspectives and roles, Divided research, Sensemaking through framing, The importance of the coworkers, 5 Anticipation—the art of looking for weak signals, Everyone makes mistakes, Mistakes at the hospital and error management, What does the research say? The normal accident theory (NAT), The HRO theory, Organizational silence and upward negative information, The great importance of leadership, 6 Resilience—the art of managing crises and learning, Resilience, Organizational resilience, Crises and organizational learning, 7 What can we learn, and how? Crisis communication—a research field in flux, Both-thinking, Lessons about internal communication before, during and after the crisis, 8 A note on methodology, References, Index