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Despite the importance of affect in persuasion and strategic communication decision making, there is a lack of a systematic and integrated approach to understanding how discrete emotions publics experience in crises and their behavioral tendencies are associated with their cognitive appraisals. A 2 (predictability: high and low) × 2 (controllability: high and low) between-subjects experiment using a random general public sample was designed to examine the variance in publics' affective responses, their strategies of coping with crises, and their acceptance of different organizational crisis responses, as a function of publics' appraisal of crisis predictability and controllability. Differential influences of the cognitive appraisals were found on publics' negative emotional responses (i.e., anger, sadness, and fright) as well as their coping strategy and organizational crisis response preferences.

AbstractThis insight piece features the Crisis Communication Think Tank (CCTT) at the University of Georgia in the United States. As a thought leadership entity joined by leading practitioners and scholars, the CCTT aims to build academia‐industry collaborations through dialogue on emerging topics and cocreation of evidence‐based advice for next‐generation crisis management theory and practice. This case study, written by the CCTT director and cofounder, walks through the origins of the CCTT, its mission and goals, structure and focus areas, as well as core activities and outputs. It discusses the unique value the CCTT approach brings to cross‐sector crisis communication knowledge generation and dissemination, shedding new light to centre‐based model exploration and innovative crisis management thought leadership development.

Sea level rise is a serious situation facing coastal cities in the world. In the United States, Miami is one of the most vulnerable cities as far as sea level rise is concerned. Floods in Miami not only come from high seawater but also from inland rivers and frequent storm surges. With Miami as a target city, this paper was prepared after taking care of its current political, economic, and cultural status, aiming to explore the way in which Miami responds to rising sea levels and proposes future urban visions. The new solution may also be applied partially or completely in other coastal cities. This work is divided into three phases. The first phase is an in-depth study that involves four aspects of Miami. They are the Water Environment (the origin and causes of the floods in Miami and existing largescale solutions), Ecological Environment (main existing plant and animal species in Miami, species differences in coastal and inland areas, and ecological migration caused by seawater intrusion), Humanistic Environment (Miami's demographic composition and cultural composition, as well as the history of migration) and Urban Infrastructure (Miami's infrastructure, existing public transportation, water supply and drainage systems, green infrastructure with proper measures and defects in response to floods and deficiencies) . The second phase proposes the concept of future assumptions for urban infrastructure. The concept is mainly based on the study in the first phase, as well as the famous case about the future of the city in history, which may be applied to Miami's unique geographical and cultural background. Due to the high permeability of the foundations in the city, the ordinary sea-crossing dams cannot effectively block seawater. That means the low-lying areas are difficult to retain in the next 50 years. The future vision proposed in this paper is to establish a series of infrastructure conversion centers, including the underground regional water treatment center and the elevated traffic conversion center. The lowland city will become the city of water in the future, and the "infrastructure center" will provide the transfer and berthing of waterborne vehicles, amphibious vehicles and land vehicles, all being connected via elevated viaducts and light rails. The third phase is the in-depth study and design of the concept. First of all, it is determined that the newly-built infrastructure conversion center is located at the site of the urban backbone road network in order to connect existing urban fabrics and roads. Then the population of each block and the frequency of flood disasters are analyzed. According to different needs, the conversion centers with different functions and sizes are designed, each placed in the existing city map. The final part of the design is the plan for the construction, that is, the construction progress that the government can control at different times.

This study examined the perceived crisis preparedness of a random sample of public relations practitioners in the United States (N=144) as evidenced in their assessment of crisis situation and organizational resources. The main effects of organization size and practitioner role were evident on practitioner's perceived crisis preparedness in different crisis situations. Organization type was found to be effective only when it interplayed with either practitioner role or organization size.

Abstract'When people's emotions are at stake, there is the constant need to be seen to engage and connect with them in their hours of need'. This study contributes to the literature on Integrated Crisis Mapping, a stakeholder‐centric crisis communication framework that attunes organisational leaders to the emotional responses and coping needs of their primary publics. Building on Weick's insight about the importance of an attitude of wisdom in making sense of a crisis, the study proposes crisis attitude as a keystone concept to help bridge the gap between theory and practice in crisis communication. The study illustrates the concept with an attitude of humility, explaining how it could be apposite to navigating the dynamics of a crisis and serve a sensegiving function that decreases stakeholders' negative emotions and fosters their trust in leadership.

Along with the advance of technologies and evolving variety of military missions, Edge Organization has been proposed to transform C2 from its conventional hierarchical and inflexible structures into more network centric and flexible forms. To develop a better understanding of Edge Organizations, in our research we take a dynamical and adaptive complex systems approach to exploring dynamical features of Egde Organizations and investigate how networking structures, self-organization mechanisms may impact on the entropy of Edge Organizations and consequently determine their agility and performance. After defining the basic concepts, we introduce an agent-based simulation model that captures the interplay among networking structures, self-organization mechanisms, and organization agility and performance with entropy as an intermediate variable. Through simulation-based case studies using the proposed model, important dynaical features of Edge Organizations can be clarified and conditions for avoiding high entropy equilibirums and for acheiving high level of agility be identified. In addition to the description of the proposed model, various measures of organizational entropy and organizational agility are discussed. A scenario design for future simulation studies is presented.

"The second edition of this vital text provides theory, research, and application to orient readers to the latest thinking about social media usage in crisis communication. Specific crisis arenas such as health, corporate, nonprofit, religious, political, and disaster are examined in depth and social media platforms and newer technology types are discussed. Social Media and Crisis Communication provides a fresh look at the role of visual communication in social media and a more global review of social media and crisis communication literature. With an enhanced focus on ethics section, a short communication overview piece, and case studies for each Area of Application, Social Media and Crisis Communication is practical for use in a variety of learning settings. A must-read for scholars, advanced students, and practitioners who wish to stay on the leading-edge of research, this book will appeal to those in public relations, strategic communications, corporate communications, government and NGO communications, and emergency and disaster response"--

AbstractAt the onset of a crisis, an initial organizational statement sets the tone for subsequent discussion. While existing literature provides strategic guidance, it offers limited insight into the message‐level execution of such statements. This study synthesizes insights from literature and trade publications to complement strategic literature by proposing a practical set of 'crisis essentials' which practitioners can leverage in composing an initial crisis statement. Upon identification of these elements from scholarly and industry literature, two online surveys presenting a hypothetical crisis scenario are released to Gen Z stakeholders and crisis communication practitioners in the United States; respondents rate the relative importance of each element. Gen Z was selected as the stakeholder population of interest due to their high activity on social media, their role as the talent which will be entering the workforce and eventually leadership roles, and the more limited existing analysis of this segment. Comparative analysis is conducted, based on two online surveys among adult individuals from these two populations, to evaluate whether gaps exist in stakeholder expectations and practitioner approaches. Findings reveal: the proposed elements (e.g., statement of the crisis, attribution, expert quote; 11 in total) were of nonzero importance to both Gen Z stakeholder respondents and crisis communication practitioner respondents, essentials related to the assuring stakeholders (e.g., action steps) were rated more highly than informational essentials (e.g., timeline), and importance ratings across survey samples were generally consistent. Practitioners should consider each of these proposed essentials when developing communication materials, and that while stakeholders expect sufficient information to understand a crisis event, they ultimately care about what the crisis means for the future of the organization. This study, grounded in crisis communication theory, provides a relevant, practical contribution to the implementation of effective strategic crisis communication in situations concerning Gen Z stakeholders.

ABSTRACTThis paper uses a unique setting of Canadian public firms adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to investigate the factors that motivate companies to revalue Property, Plant, and Equipment (PP&E) under the deemed cost provision in IFRS 1, and whether revaluations help predict future performance, and what is the market reaction to such revaluations. Utilizing the probit model, difference-in-differences approach, and Wald test, we find that large firms and/or firms with higher net PP&E to total assets ratios are more likely to revalue PP&E, and firms adopting the fair value option for PP&E record lower depreciation in the post-IFRS period. In addition, we show that investors react negatively to the firms electing the fair value option for PP&E and the market discounts such revaluation information.