Recently in one of my public relations courses, we watched The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary that investigated the exposure of insider trading with Enron years ago. As I've discussed in my blog before, Ivy "Ledbetter" Lee was one of the pioneers of transparency in public relations-but that does not mean that all companies have actually learned from his ways.
In the documentary, it is revealed that the company's investor relations were ill-handled; in combination with insider trading and a lack of transparency for shareholders, the corporation eventually faced one of the biggest financial downfalls and further bankruptcies of all time. But why didn't Enron see through the potential devastation?
If you look ahead to the future economic crises and downfalls of AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, it's easy to wonder: why didn't these investment banks and mortgage companies realize that their shareholders and employees would eventually learn of their mishaps?
For some reason, I notice a trend in this millennium. It seems that financial institutions are constantly at fault and not taking any credit for the issue, no pun intended.
As I have experienced crisis communications in the sports industry, I have witnessed the immediate troubleshooting that goes into effect. Sure, when a financial institution has a big crash, they troubleshoot, but it always seems that the company had a lot of past possibilities to fix their error ahead of time.
Any crisis in the sports industry or federal government must always be confronted immediately. If a player gets in a brawl, or a team owner does something stupid, there are immediate press conferences following within the next day, at the owner's discretion of course.
Is this because sports and government typically garner more attention than any financial institution? Or do certain industries simply practice better forms of crisis communications than others?
No comments:
Post a Comment