Rethinking Communication in the Face of Global Crises

Abstract

Organizations face a wide variety of global crises including climate change, wars, and pandemics. These global disruptions are motivating organizations to rethink the ways they communicate with stakeholders and the larger public. While traditional crisis communication research employs a managerial perspective and attends to crises as a concern for individual organizations, global crises pose different challenges as organizations must attend to a wider group of interconnected and interdependent stakeholders. In this chapter, we explore how communication as constitutive of organization, or CCO theorizing, rethinks crisis communication as a relational practice attentive to issues beyond strategic objectives and as an ongoing process that requires embracing tensions among diverse voices. Overall, we invite novel ways to explore the communicative processes of organizing in the face of global crises.