Business crises are not issues that are new, rare or strange in the business world. However, business crises have been there over the years and the occurrences of such business crises incidents have been on increase for the last two decades. It is evident from the business world that the crises are witnessed across all business sectors and industries around the globe. In this connection, crises have been reported in business organizations involved in the provision of different services such as food, healthcare, transportation among others.
Similar trends of crises report is also common in those manufacturing companies that deal with production of goods such as vehicles and other consumer products. Undoubtedly, the rise of a crisis within an organization definitely implies that there would be some sort of negative impacts in the operation and performance of the organization.
The effects of crises are marked and displayed to the organization through losing the organization performance in its productivity, stock, profitability and incurring of costs through lawsuits. Crisis management, therefore, becomes a crucial factor of checking and controlling the performance of the organization by acting in a proactive and active way to prevent an event which has a potential likelihood of leading the company to financial crisis (Gareth and George, 45)
The McDonald’s, an organization involved in the delivery of a range of food services is not an exception in the list of organizations that have experienced or fallen in the traps of crises.
When the organization experienced a serious crisis, both from the internal environments as well as external ones, the corporation devised a number of ways of combating such crises through which the organization was able to survive and thrive in its competitive business operations.
In handling the organization’s crises that arise, the McDonald’s has employed the strategy of denial and/or avoidance to dealing with some of its complex issues that have plagued it. Focusing on this particular approach, there are certain incidents in which the McDonald’s executives declined to appear before some committees’ appointments.
In a polite manner, they have always issued apologies of their commitments, which were further accompanied by statements that give guidelines of the way forward. Instead of meeting with the members of public media in a face-to face environment, many a time they have directed them to visit their website for more information as it is depicted in many comments of non-McDonalds’.
The practice of denial is further augmented through refusing to accept their meeting negotiations and consensus in which there is a lot of criticism from the public. The company has relentless denied acceptance of a withdrawal decision of its product as result of its connection with a film produced almost at the end of the past century (Gareth and George, 346).
While avoiding the 2006 media comments and coverage, the organization had its restaurants across the globe labeled, but when well aware of the lack of enough information on the Super Size Me, they often claimed that they did not restrict any information to the clients, however, all that what was necessary for the clients to know had been made available. The use of executives’ convincing messages to encounter the media messages is a clear way that has been employed in this Corporation.
The message of Chief executive officer has severally showed the need for better communication method on the issues of nutrition and health. By doing so, the organization clears away if any false information is released by the media groups and thereby convinces the public, its consumers and shareholders of their direction or goal on the particular matter (Gareth and George, 243).
Apart from the above approach of denial and avoidance, the organization has also employed the method of information sharing and gathering. Here, the organization initiated a blogging system. The blogging system offered means for open talk and dialogues. It is through this program that the organization has been able to deal with most of the issues concerning the Corporation’s accountability and responsibilities to the society.
It is by this means that the organization has released numerous messages and information of criticism against the health providers who appear to attack the organization on claims of providing unhealthy foods to the consumers. The organization has further worked toward crisis management through the use of false promising of actions which will never be implemented.
When the organization is faced with the problem of using sub-standards product in their food preparations, the Corporation promises to change some of these with quality ones. However, when the company promised to use quality oils, it helped the organization to circumvent the issues of crisis with the FDA, but the actual use of quality oils never got implemented, which means that it continued to prepare its foods with trans oils that are of poor quality.
Works Cited
Gareth Jones, Jennifer George: Contemporary Management. New York: McGraw-Hill. Print.