One way to be prepared for all of these eventualities is to, literally, be prepared. Companies increasingly are engaging in pre-crisis planning, which can include simulated crises, assessing areas of internal vulnerability and creating multidisciplinary crisis teams, experts say. As well, he says, companies are putting more responsibility on their CEOs shoulders, tying compensation to company performance, which makes top-level management more sensitive to heading off a potential crisis. For instance, various studies of chief executive compensation trends have shown that a significantly higher percentage of a CEO s total compensation package comes from stock options tied directly to corporate performance via the share price compared with 20 years ago. Meanwhile, other studies have shown that even those compensation package portions not derived from stock options and related instruments are increasingly like to rise and fall with corporate performance.
Crises are very complex and fast-moving.
And a tremendous amount of work will have to be done if a company hopes to gain control over the crisis and maybe its own destiny. As a result, even broadcast organizations put hyperlinks to the company s site. And when a Seattle newspaper erroneously reported that the airplane had incurred problems during a stop in Mexico, Alaska Airlines was able to short-circuit the report at once on its site, according to Bergen. Case Study Westinghouse Electric Corp. One often unacknowledged source of rumor and negative stories is a company s own employees, particularly if the firm is going through a period of upheaval. Marketers can also use the Internet with this audience to avoid being the last to hear of an internal rumor by setting up their own discussion boards.