![]() ![]() In terms of addressing the crisis internally, she emphasized the fact that her leadership team was not waiting for the final investigation to make changes in the company’s structure, bureaucracy, and culture but rather, such changes were underway.įurther, the CEO argued that she and the executive team were responsible for making things right and they were committed to doing so. ![]() She also explains that GM ordered an independent investigation that would be made public:īarra stressed the company’s full cooperation with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Congress and mentioned that she had ordered an unvarnished external investigation into the company’s practices that would become available to the general public. General Motors CEO Mary Barra has two main messages in her crisis communication: first of all, she expresses a sense of urgency to show that she understands that GM must tackle this crisis head on, internally as well as externally. PART I: GM and Toyota’s crisis response strategy GM: a sense of urgency and regret In her paper, Maiorescu compared the crisis strategy and messaging of both companies, as well as the media coverage and the reputational outcome that resulted from the two strategies. Finally, the company compensated the victims’ families and paid a fine of $48.8 million. While at GM the information about the faulty cars did not reach the leadership team, in Toyota’s case investigations pointed to the management’s purposeful avoidance of recalls despite warnings and 93 deaths all of which, in turn, enabled the company to save 100 million dollars. Despite 87 deaths, GM labelled the warnings as a matter of customer convenience that only reached top management in 2014 (Valukas, 2014) when GM initiated major recalls and compensated the victims’ families. GM’s crisis started in 2005 when complaints from dealers and customers warned the company of stalls. At GM, a faulty ignition switch caused 87 deaths, leading to 74 recalls that involved almost 27 million cars: Despite 93 deaths and warnings to the top management about the problem, the company did not recall any cars until it was forced to do so following a government investigation into the problem. In the last decade, both GM and Toyota were faced with major recall actions. Toyota had to recall 5.3 million cars by January 2010 because of a “sticky gas pedal”. Like the famous Tolstoi quote that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, most crises are too idiosyncratic to compare them to other crises in anything but the most general way.īut a paper published recently in Public Relations Review by Roxana Maiorescu of Emerson managed to compare two reputational crises that are uncannily similar. In crisis communication, it’s exceedingly rare to be able to do a side-by-side comparison of crises. ![]()
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