Public Relations and Crisis Management in Government Organizations: Examining Core Roles and Functions of Public Relations Within the Three Stage Approach to Managing Crises

Abstract

Public Relations (PR) is an essential part of organizations. Institutions rely greatly on the functions played by PR to facilitate information between top management and their internal and external publics. The role of PR is deeply seethed in management of communication channels and communication between organizations and their publics. One critical role of PR in organizations is the management of crisis situations. The role of PR here is even more important as crisis situations have the capacity to destroy organizations. This paper focuses on the role of PR in managing crisis in government organizations. The paper’s core objective is to understand the role of PR in managing crisis in government organization while paying specific attention to the three-stage model of crisis management. The paper argues that it essential to understand what roles PR plays in the various stages of three stage approach in order to better understand the role of PR in crisis management. The paper was a desk research and employed the use of secondary data assessed from e-journals, e-documents, e-books etc. The paper finds that PR has critical roles to play in all three stages (pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis) of the three-stage crisis management approach. The paper finds that research, internal crisis communication, image/reputation repair and training are some core roles PR plays during crisis situations.