This study set out to investigate if PR personnel's perception of professionalism would affect they way they were consciousness of an organizational crisis and what kind of impacts their professionalism and crisis types would have on their consciousne...
This study set out to investigate if PR personnel's perception of professionalism would affect they way they were consciousness of an organizational crisis and what kind of impacts their professionalism and crisis types would have on their consciousness of crisis. Considering the reality that PR personnel's consciousness of crisis plays a vital role in their performing during a crisis and Augustine(1995)'s argument that what matters in the consciousness of crisis is not the actual size of the event or the progress but how people feel about it, there is no denying that the characteristics of PR personnel who are conscious of a crisis have huge influences on their crisis management. Thus it's needed to study what kind of factors would work to affect PR personnel's consciousness of crisis. Given that the subjects were PR personnel, the study introduced the value of potential damage, possibility of damage, and time pressure, which were identified as the variables of consciousness of crisis in Billings, Milburn, and Schaalman(1980) that analyzed consciousness of crisis from the perspective of those who felt a crisis. It was understood that there had been ongoing research efforts into the perception of professionalism among PR personnel in Korea since 1992. But there was no research on the direct influences of their perception of professionalism on their consciousness of crisis in crisis management, which led the investigator to introduce PR professionalism in crisis management. In an attempt to examine the impacts of crisis types on their consciousness of crisis, the responsibility dimension of categorization criteria for the crisis types by Coombs(1995) was used. In examining the perception of PR professionalism by PR personnel, 20 statement items(Park Jong-min, 2001) regarding the perception were used to measure the subjects' perception of professionalism. The subjects were also asked to read high- and low-responsibility scenarios and answer questions about a crisis situation to figure out the impacts of crisis types on their consciousness of crisis. High-responsibility scenarios were presented in hypothetical articles covering repeating events where the cause of a crisis lied inside along with possibility of control. And low-responsibility scenarios presented the opposite contents. Used as the variables to measure the subjects' consciousness of crisis, the value of potential damage, possibility of damage, and time pressure were first empirically verified among the PR personnel in Korea. A survey was conducted to 108 PR personnel working at companies/profit organizations, PR firms, government/non-profit organizations, and other organizations. The questionnaires from 101 subjects were used in analysis. As a result, there was an important fact revealed in respect to the influences of PR personnel's perception of professionalism on their consciousness of crisis. In case of a high-responsibility crisis type, those who had a high perception of PR professionalism scored more mean points in the value of potential damage, possibility of damage, and time pressure than those who had a low perception. The result indicates that the former group regarded a serious crisis of high responsibility more seriously than the latter group. In case of a serious crisis situation of high responsibility, the PR personnel's perception of professionalism had impacts on their judgment of the value of potential damage. As for the impacts of the crisis types on their consciousness of crisis, the crisis types affected the value of potential damage and possibility of damage. But there were no significant relationships between the specific variables of PR personnel's perception of professionalism and those of their consciousness of crisis. Then a hierarchical stepwise method was employed to analyze the increase to the explanatory power of the variables of consciousness of crisis according to the sequential introduction of the five dimensions of perception of PR professionalism. The results showed that education and training exercised impacts on consof crisis in both high- and low-responsibility crisis types, which means that education and training among the influential variables of perception of PR professionalism to consciousness of crisis had the most significant impacts on their consciousness of crisis. That is the most important finding of the study. By investigating the impacts of PR personnel's perception of professionalism and crisis types on their consciousness of crisis, the study generated an empirical result that the more they were perceptive of professionalism, the more accurate they were conscious of a crisis, which claims crucial significance. It's also significant to first measure the value of potential damage, possibility of damage, and time pressure, which were never empirically proved among PR personnel in Korea as the variables of consciousness of crisis. In conclusion, the study demonstrated that PR personnel's perception of professionalism had impacts on their consciousness of crisis. Critical to effective crisis management is accurate consciousness of crisis. Especially, the results bestow legitimacy on the idea that education and training will help PR personnel with a high perception of PR professionalism make more accurate judgments of a crisis.