A Prodromal Checklist to Diagnose Crisis Preparedness of Business Organizations

Crisis communication, as an essential part of crisis management, is a major challenge for organizations, especially the business within the current communication framework. As the stake- holders' perceptions represent very often the greatest potential danger in crises, communication plays quite frequently an important role in the organizational efforts to control, contain, and resolve a crisis situation. The absence or insufficiency of crisis communication management is a major threat to the organizational achievements because of significant financial losses generated by inadequate stakehold- er perceptions. We have initiated a research in this field, with special attention to the Romanian busi- ness situation. The first empirical step of our research sought to determine to what extent Romanian business organizations are perceived as being aware of this challenge. A survey has confirmed that they are perceived by their stakeholders as quite unaware, as not acting on a planned basis as far as organi- zational crises are concerned. Based on this initial empirical research, in order to help business organ- izations to be seen as reliable actors in crisis situations, we have made a preliminary checklist with "prodromes" (symptoms) to be considered both by business managers and communication strategists while planning for crisis management.