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Noble, James (2010) A Case Study on the effectiveness of Crisis Management within a Global Organisation. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Worldwide events like the BP oil incident (2010) and subprime crisis (2007) have created surprises whereby organisations have had to quickly respond. These crises are occurring in an increasingly competitive and turbulent business arena which has made effective preparation and timely responses even more critical. Much of crisis management literature directly focuses on man-made disasters (Piotrowski, 2006:12), however this research among other limited studies provides exclusive insight into how an organisation responds to an event which is uncontrollable to prevent or contain. This study uncovers how Experian; a global organisation, prepared, responded and learned from the Chile earthquakes (2010). Incorporating a well-rounded appreciation of the crisis and organisational management behaviour enabled this research to capture a holistic account of the effectiveness of their theoretical and practical crisis management capabilities. The implementation of a number of key conceptual frameworks was used to formulate the research model to reflect contemporary organisational crisis management issues. The model consists of multiple phases of the crisis event (pre, event and post), factors (identification, preparation, prevention, containment, recovery and learning) and themes (leadership, communication and stakeholder involvement). This researcher acknowledges the interconnected nature of Experian’s risk management and business continuity activities and uses this as a foundation to form an understanding of what enables or disables them to manage the crisis.

This research undertook an epistemological interpretist philosophical perspective through a case study analysis consisting of eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior and middle level management in the UK, U.S. and Chile. The reason for this focus was to ensure the researcher gained insight into key organisational issues such as management behaviours, processes, systems and motives. Overall, Experian displayed strong evidence of crisis-preparedness over crisis-proneness due to their fully integrated enterprise-wide risk management approach. Experian were able to respond quickly to the event through global support, leadership and proactive preparation. This however was not the case for post-crisis activities which was surprisingly weak and unformulated in contrast to the other phases. This was represented by fundamental communication and leadership issues which blemished aspects of the response and their future resilience. Not all organisations can respond perfectly to a crisis but this research sheds light on success and failure, strengths and weaknesses faced by a modern crises.

Item Type:	Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Depositing User:	EP, Services
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2011 15:18
Last Modified:	30 Dec 2017 10:34
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/23951

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