Crisis management plan for Flinders Ports

Crisis management plan for Flinders Ports

Section A

Introduction

The process of crisis management refers to the steps taken by the organization to face important events that are harmful or threatening for the business, for general public, or stakeholders of the business. Crisis management was emerged and originated with large scale environmental and industrial disasters that took place during 1980s. The elements that are common in term of crises are; surprise element in the crisis; short time for making decision in such events; and the attribute of threat for organizations. In comparison with risk management, which refers to identifying and evaluating the possible threats and identifying the best possible choice which can be employed to avoid such threats, crisis management involves in facing with these threats before it occurs, during the crisis hits organization and after the threat has been occurred. It is the broader area in the context of management which requires techniques and skills for identifying, understanding, assessing and dealing with these threatening situations, most importantly from the moment when it strikes first at the certain point from which recovery process begins (Reid, 2000).

Therefore it is more appropriate for a business to have crisis management plan for the business to manage any type of disaster or disruptive occasion for the overall business continuity plan. There are various factors that need to be considered for developing an effective crisis management plan for the business that will be discussed in later paper.

Discussion

Crisis costs business a huge amount of money and defame if proper responses are not taken. For instance, cost incurred by Exxon for Exxon Valdez oil spill was around $ 3.3 billion, tempering Tylenol capsule costs to Johnson & Johnson for over $ 100 million; and the cost for Union Carbide plant in India costs around $ 470 million. However, these are few examples from the huge crises cost to businesses. Thus businesses are required to get prepared for such disasters and crises. In addition to this it is observed that only 55 percent of organizations are taking initiative of developing disaster management teams and among them only 10 percent considers that they are prepared for crisis. Therefore in this area it is important for businesses to understand and motivate themselves with the importance of crisis management and also how to be better prepared for crisis management (Devlin, 2007).

The crisis is defined as significant disrupting event that is unexpected by nature and affects business's facilities, personnel, important records, reputation, or could impact profitability of the business, which as a return result in development of uncertainty and this crisis could have dramatic impact over reputation of business, profitability of business or the capability of the business in operating its business normally if such crisis or disaster are not cater in effective and appropriate way. The impact of crisis event could result in high intensity or low intensity in term of nature of impact; it could be internal or external to the business environment; and this crisis ...