Content and assignments to make your business course content come alive now!
Right now is, as they say, a “teachable moment.” If ever you wanted your business students to learn the critical importance of crisis management as part of their business education, there’s probably no better time than now, in the midst of a global crisis.
Students can immediately understand and relate to concepts as they see the need right in their home towns. They also see how companies—both large and small—handle their responses.
Your current syllabus may not even include crisis management, but you may want to include some content now and add crisis management content as you plan for your future classes.
Topics to Include in your Crisis Management Content:
** Types of Crisis Management
- Internally-generated crisis – How do I prepare to manage a crisis that the business itself has created or could be seen as culpable in creating internally?
- Externally-generated crisis – How do I prepare to manage a dire situation that threatens my business, either in the short or long-term?
** Components of Crisis Management
- Prevention – What a company can do to reduce the likelihood of an internally-caused crisis.
- Preparedness – What a company can do in advance to reduce the crisis.
- Response – What steps a company should take in the midst of a crisis.
- Recovery – How to restore normalcy and return to business operations coming out of and after a crisis.
** A Few Keys to Success in Crisis Management
- Leadership – Strong, clear-headed leadership with the input of experts both helps a company respond appropriately and also reassures employees, customers, and stakeholders that the right decisions are being made.
- Honesty and transparency – Rumors and misinformation vastly increase during a crisis, so honest information, even when news is not good, is critical in ensuring that decisions will be followed and reduces dissension.
- Communication and public relations management – Strong, clear communication to all parties, including public relations, is an absolute must in reputation management.
Crisis Management Assignments for Students Now:
- Gather and evaluate advertisements/commercials/public relations statements from companies to see how they position the company.
- Research a company that is “pivoting” to provide new or different services as a result of the pandemic, examples could be restaurants.
- Evaluate leadership, transparency, and communication of different leaders—both corporate and in government to gauge effectiveness and assess style, content, honesty.
- Evaluate public policy activities that are being done on a national, state, and local level to help businesses survive to gauge their effectiveness and suggest other actions governmental and NGO agencies could take to help companies.
- For advanced/MBA students: Identify a specific local company they can contact to work with to help them work on a survival strategy.
REMEMBER: PlanningShop has teaching materials to help you succeed in online learning! We have digital versions of our popular texts and downloadable software as well as digital ancillary materials, such as PowerPoints and test banks. Contact us for review copies by clicking here: https://planningshop.com/instructors/
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Copyright Rhonda Abrams, 2020