The social construction of crisis in higher education:
Creators: name: Gigliotti, Ralph A.
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2017

description: This dissertation explored the nature of crisis in higher education—a context where conflicts of various kinds across a diverse array of stakeholders are common, and where their occurrence often challenge core institutional values. Much of the crisis management and crisis prevention literature focus primarily on the public relations aspect of crisis—how to protect the reputation of the institution, maintain a favorable impression in the eyes of many stakeholders, and use communication to shape public opinion. Unlike existing studies that characterize communication as a tool for managing specific components of crisis situations after they emerge, this project placed a broadened emphasis on the role of communication in the ongoing work of crisis leadership. Additionally, unlike traditional studies that treat crisis as an objective phenomenon, this project considered the ways that crises are created through communication. Rather than take the idea of “crisis in higher education” as a given, the researcher analyzed the use of this label and advanced a more holistic and comprehensive portrayal of crisis leadership—a phenomenon that involves, but extends beyond, reputation management.     The following four research questions guided this project: 1) What events/situations are characterized as crises in higher education? 2) How do these events/situations become defined and labeled as crises? 3) What are the prominent characteristics of the discourse around crisis and crisis leadership in higher education? 4) What skills, values, and competencies are important for the work of crisis leaders in higher education? The author investigated these central questions through the use of two research methods. In response to the first question, the author first conducted a content analysis of higher education news outlets, including Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and a smaller sample of articles from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the past five years (2011-2015). The second phase of the project, in response to the remaining questions, involved semi-structured interviews with 37 senior university leaders representing a diversity of units from Association of American University (AAU) member institutions.     The multi-method investigation of this topic led to a number of findings. First, there exist a myriad of different types of incidents or situations that are typically classified as “crises” in higher education—crises that are cross-cutting in nature—based on the following taxonomy: academic, athletics, technological, facilities, financial/business, human resources, leadership/ governance, natural disaster, public safety, racial or identity conflict, and student affairs. Next, the senior leaders interviewed for this project addressed three central findings related to the process of defining and labeling phenomena as crises: there are multiple, and at times conflicting, definitions of crisis, crises are distinct from other types of events or situations, and many factors contribute to the elevation of an incident to the level of crisis, most notably the use of social media. The third set of findings capture the communicative construction of crisis in higher education. Specifically, crises are said to exist if other perceive them to exist, crises may be called into existence based on the framing of events or situations by leaders, and crisis often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy based on one’s decision to designate an event or series of events as a crisis. Finally, there are many core skills, values, and competencies associated with the practice of crisis leadership in higher education that may be cultivated through formal training and development efforts.