Course description:
This course focuses on the issues relevant to planning, development and execution of crisis communications programs for businesses and organizations and public relations techniques for communication with stakeholders during a crisis. Negotiation skills are a powerful tool in the arsenal of each successful manager. The time invested in mastering these skills has an ROI incomparable to any other form of investment.
Course Aims:
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
- To give students exposure to the issues facing public relations practitioners in businesses and organizations when a crisis situation demands immediate public response.
- To provide students with practical techniques and planning necessary to successfully communicate during a crisis situation.
- To allocate a forum for graduate students to discuss the dynamics and implications of various public relations strategies among themselves and with experts in the field.
- To practice basic negotiation skills, explain the methods and techniques that can be effectively used in the process of negotiation as well as to demonstrate how to deal with the obstacles and complicating factors.
Course outcomes:
By the successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
- Crisis Defined (Psychology of Crisis, Defining a Crisis, Addressing stakeholders, Internal/External Issues).
- Developing a Crisis Communications Plan (Defining a crisis, Establishing reporting authority, Establishing procedures to address stakeholders, Assigning a spokesman, Communicating the plan).
- Determine the Media in a Crisis (Expectations, Maintaining credibility, Developing Messages, Accommodating Information Demands).
- Determine crisis in Public Companies ( Identify stakeholders, Fiduciary crisis, Product/performance crisis, Legal crisis).
- Understand the nature of crisis in Non-Profit Organizations(Identify stakeholders, Maintaining integrity, Financial crisis, Service crisis, Morality crisis).
- Understanding the crisis in Public Service/Government Sector (Identify stakeholders, Public safety issues, Maintaining confidence).
- Understanding general introduction into the nature, structure, and course of negotiations. Characteristics of distributive negotiation, strategies and tactics for claiming value in negotiation.