In public administration, crises are bound to happen, whether long-term or short-term, and the effectiveness of the management to handle the situation is critical. Depending on the type of company, crisis management could range from IT systems-related issue to natural disasters such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The public may quickly forget details of the crisis's cause, but how the problem is handled with be etched in their memory for much longer. For many companies, organizations, and the public, how crises are handled could mean the difference between filing for bankruptcy or bouncing back to recovery ( Bundy et al., 2017). In a non-crisis situation, therefore, the organization's primary focus would be to resolve the problem and get the organization into normalcy again. By quickly assessing the impact of the crisis, the management will likely be dictated to their choices and how communication flows to resolve the problem. Since the reputational impact will outweigh operational costs, the organization should apply problem-solving techniques to evaluate the outcomes and make informed decisions objectively. Since the project involves the challenges of crisis administration to public administration, the applied project will occur in phases. These phases include; pre-crisis, post-crisis, and response to the crisis. The pre-crisis phase is a prevention and preparation phase that seeks to reduce the risks that could lead to a crisis. In the COVID 19 pandemic, for instance, or other global epidemics in the 17 th and 18 th century, the pre-crisis phase is when government institutions actively engage with research institutions to survey and research diseases ( Lai & Wong, 2020). The stage involves creating a crisis management plan, selecting a team, and conducting exercises to test both the program and the team. As Bhaduri stated in his research, crisis management can be handled when stakeholders are updated regularly, and a crisis management team is set up through practice on how to manage and respond to calamities effectively ( Bhaduri, 2019). When the government implements social distancing rules and regulations in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, its effectiveness is less likely to be witnessed. Research indicates that only one in four Americans keep the World Health Organization's safety precautions and implemented by the government ( Williams et al., 2017) . If the public had prior practice to social distancing rules during pandemics such as the Spanish flu, citizens would be better positioned to respond to such situations when the epidemic strikes. Therefore, crisis management, especially before its occurrence, will determine the government's effectiveness to answer and overcome a crisis ( Regester & Larkin, 2008). Crisis response is the second phase, which involves the activities that the government's management says and does after an occurrence of a calamity. During this phase, help mitigate the crisis's impact by carefully drafting and releasing messages sent out to the public ( Alkandari & Al-Lozi, 2017). This phase can be categorized into initial response and reputation repair. Time for initial response involves a set-out guideline for how to respond during a crisis. Whichever method of response, it should always be consistent, accurate, and quick. Lastly, the Post-crisis response is when the problem has been successfully mitigated. The stage could be the continuation of reputation management or fulfilling a promise provided during crisis response. As the final stage, however, follow-up communication is critical for releasing updates on the recovery process, corrective actions, investigation on the cause of the crisis, and the affected stakeholders.
References
Alkandari, A., & Al-Lozi, M. (2017). Knowledge management and its role on organizational crisis management: A literature review. Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS), 6 (4), 833-850.
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Bhaduri, R. M. (2019). Leveraging culture and leadership in crisis management. European Journal of Training and Development.
Bundy, J., Pfarrer, M. D., Short, C. E., & Coombs, W. T. (2017). Crises and crisis management: Integration, interpretation, and research development. Journal of Management, 43 (6), 1661-1692.
Lai, I. K. W., & Wong, J. W. C. (2020). Comparing crisis management practices in the hotel industry between initial and pandemic stages of COVID-19. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Regester, M., & Larkin, J. (2008). Risk issues and crisis management in public relations: A casebook of best practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Williams, T. A., Gruber, D. A., Sutcliffe, K. M., Shepherd, D. A., & Zhao, E. Y. (2017). Organizational response to adversity: Fusing crisis management and resilience research streams. Academy of Management Annals, 11 (2), 733-769.
