Final Report Summary - CRISCOMSCORE (Developing a Crisis Communication Scorecard)
The crisis communication scorecard endeavours to offer authorities a strategic approach for coping with the communication challenges in the various phases of complex crises. In this section the structure and content of the developed scorecard were justified. The elements that construct the instrument were introduced and the criteria for the indicators through which quality of the communication functions can be evaluated were pointed out. This section refers to Kaplan and Norton, the initiators of the balanced scorecard, whose work inspired the authors to develop a scorecard for crisis communication. Scorecards were originally developed for business organisations, but in this case the principle was applied to communication supporting crisis management by public organisations. The authors explain the choices made in the process. In the structure of the scorecard the various phases of crisis management were followed. The case for a strong stakeholder orientation was made and communication tasks were identified accordingly. The next step was to phrase the performance indicators as statements for assessment by scale measurement. The indicators of the scorecard employ the best practices of crisis communication as these have been documented over the past few years by scholars and practitioners. (A number of these scholars are mentioned in Appendix A to this section, and the following book sections also refer to important background literature.).In addition the scorecard draws on the results of the empirical research reported in this book. The measurement instrument can be used to audit the preparedness of public authorities to communicate in an emergency. It also contributes to the thorough evaluation of a rehearsal of a crisis scenario. The Crisis Communication Scorecard itself is presented in Appendix 1 to this book and a User guide is provided in Appendix 2.
The reservoir of practices that has been collected from the literature, as well as from the organisations studied in this section, makes a major contribution to the Crisis Communication Guide and through it also to the development of the Crisis Communication Scorecard. The best practices that have been detected during the work on this section have a broad array of roles:
1. As a pool of instructions to adopt in the Guide: The most meaningful and straightforward contribution was of specific practices; these have been included in the guide itself. This is the case with most of the practices found here. Yet even the practices that were less directly relevant to the purposes of the guide (e.g. practices that were too specific to a particular organisation or particular circumstances) made a contribution in compiling the guide.
2. As an index: The practices derived from the literature, as well as those supplied by our interviewees, have been used by us as an index or a reminder of aspects of crisis communication that should be included in the guide.
3. As an indicator of problems: Even when a practice was not directly incorporated in the guide, we have often regarded it as an indicator of the existence of a genuine problem. This impelled us to look for the solution to the problem in the literature or try to see if other interviewees had the answers.
4. As a basis for establishing other practices: Often we found a practice concerning a certain phase of a crisis that we could derive further practices from. These extra practices concerned, for example, preparations required in earlier phases to be able to make effective use of the base practice when the time comes.
5. As reinforcement: The distribution of the practices themselves, as well as the overlap between those from the literature and those contributed by our interviewees' own experience, served as an indicator of the prevalence of specific problems as well as their solution.
The reservoir of practices that has been collected from the literature, as well as from the organisations studied in this section, makes a major contribution to the Crisis Communication Guide and through it also to the development of the Crisis Communication Scorecard. The best practices that have been detected during the work on this section have a broad array of roles:
1. As a pool of instructions to adopt in the Guide: The most meaningful and straightforward contribution was of specific practices; these have been included in the guide itself. This is the case with most of the practices found here. Yet even the practices that were less directly relevant to the purposes of the guide (e.g. practices that were too specific to a particular organisation or particular circumstances) made a contribution in compiling the guide.
2. As an index: The practices derived from the literature, as well as those supplied by our interviewees, have been used by us as an index or a reminder of aspects of crisis communication that should be included in the guide.
3. As an indicator of problems: Even when a practice was not directly incorporated in the guide, we have often regarded it as an indicator of the existence of a genuine problem. This impelled us to look for the solution to the problem in the literature or try to see if other interviewees had the answers.
4. As a basis for establishing other practices: Often we found a practice concerning a certain phase of a crisis that we could derive further practices from. These extra practices concerned, for example, preparations required in earlier phases to be able to make effective use of the base practice when the time comes.
5. As reinforcement: The distribution of the practices themselves, as well as the overlap between those from the literature and those contributed by our interviewees' own experience, served as an indicator of the prevalence of specific problems as well as their solution.
