Priok case; turning crisis into opportunity
Priok fatal clash is one of many cases smashing Indonesia’s reputation. The smashing started at least with Artalyta glitzy story, then the ‘cicak vs buaya’, Century Bank case, other corruption and bribery cases, legal and tax case-brokers disclosure, and last but not least, the multimillion dollar bribery case related to the election of deputy chairman of Bank Indonesia that oddly caused amnesia to a key witness. Most of those scandals are not solved so far and some still dominate media headlines. Public are introduced to new law-breaking ‘stars’ who became popular after excessive expose on media.
Those cases meet all characteristics of crisis. Crisis is major occurrences with potential negative outcomes for the organizations. The cases are unpredictable, occurred within a short time, leaving not too many options for decision makers to find solution, forcing for changes, causing panic and uncontrolled actions and ultimately threaten services or even worse they damage public trust and destroy reputation.
Many internal and external causes can be identified as the trigger of this type of crisis. About 60% of the causes of crisis are internal matters such as organizational misdeed, absence of constructive communications, human breakdowns, workplace accident and workplace violence from sexual harassment to internal politics and ethics abuses.
The aforementioned cases unveiled there are individuals of organizations who got involved in some misdeeds. At Attorney General Office, a prosecutor was sentenced to 20-year imprisonment after he’s caught of receiving bribery. Others are under investigation for their involvement in other cases. For the police, middle to high-ranked officers are under internal investigation related to the tax-corruption case and finally 10 high-ranked officials at the Tax Office are also suspects and were released from their positions.
Crisis unquestionably disrupts day-to-day operation of organization, and sooner or later ruins the reputations. A worst crisis can wipe out the organization from its existence just like what happened to Lehman Brothers. As a result of Priok fatal crash, there are already demands to review or to get rid of the existence of Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) including the one from The National Human Rights body.
Many other crises at international corporate level resulted in serious long impact for years. The accident involving Exxon Valdez, a 987-foot tanker that ran aground on a reef at Prince William Sound in 1989 and spilled 260,000 barrels crude oil in Alaska water was one of the worst. According to the council overseeing restoration efforts recently, the water in the area currently "is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill”. It was twenty years after the spill.
If crisis affects the operation and the reputation of organization, a failure of crisis communications management significantly has an effect on the morale of the staff, credibility of the organization, and public trust. Such crisis situations are emergency situations that absolutely require timely and well-planned actions and well-coordinated communications.
The public debate, the controversies, and many ‘new stars’ featured by media in these cases instigate negative public perception on state institutions. As result, state institutions are now under serious public scrutiny and face criticism for scandals and illegalities in which their officials are guilty of wrongdoing and may face civil or criminal liability (Hearit, 2006).
The primary action for any organization in crisis is identifying the real nature of a current crisis, intervening to minimize damage and recovering from the crisis. Crisis response addresses the needs not only of external stakeholders, but also of employees. Employees are the most affected party due to their personal involvement with the organization and emotionally they are the most attached individuals. They should be ‘the ambassador’ of the organization as they part of it. When recovery is underway, they are the ones who can help recovering the organization or they can let the damage happens.
How do the police, The Attorney General Office, and Tax Office act to manage the situation? ‘Cicak and Buaya’ case subsides not because of solution but because there was other cases that emerged and distracted media and public attention. Internal investigations are underway but they are not functioned quickly enough. At the beginning, the police reacted defensively to the allegation that there are officers who get involved in illegal action or wrongdoings. The Tax Office needs weeks to start the investigation of its bureaucrats and The Attorney General Office unhurriedly released prosecutors who have been suspiciously got involved in Gayus case.
Other key element in managing crisis communications is honesty and transparency. Honesty and transparency is fundamental when public sentiment is negatively sensitive and the trust towards organization’s credibility is at stake. In this circumstance, any message sent will be verified by stakeholders with other information they got from other sources. Even worse, some messages will be perceived and responded negatively. This is the time when new media, facebook, twitter, blog and many others, can become the real challenger to honesty. Through this new media, every single person can release information for various purposes without filter that is very much in contrast to traditional media.
The continuous media hype on the wrongdoings of the officials develops into widespread negative perception on state officials and state institutions. This adds up to the poor public impression on various public services provided by state institutions such as the service to obtain ID card, driving license, passport, even in paying tax. This is the time to turn crisis into opportunity. It can start with honesty and transparency. Ignorance towards an honest communications will keep the cases open for further investigation by public in the future. And it will become a harmful page in the history of this country.
Those cases meet all characteristics of crisis. Crisis is major occurrences with potential negative outcomes for the organizations. The cases are unpredictable, occurred within a short time, leaving not too many options for decision makers to find solution, forcing for changes, causing panic and uncontrolled actions and ultimately threaten services or even worse they damage public trust and destroy reputation.
Many internal and external causes can be identified as the trigger of this type of crisis. About 60% of the causes of crisis are internal matters such as organizational misdeed, absence of constructive communications, human breakdowns, workplace accident and workplace violence from sexual harassment to internal politics and ethics abuses.
The aforementioned cases unveiled there are individuals of organizations who got involved in some misdeeds. At Attorney General Office, a prosecutor was sentenced to 20-year imprisonment after he’s caught of receiving bribery. Others are under investigation for their involvement in other cases. For the police, middle to high-ranked officers are under internal investigation related to the tax-corruption case and finally 10 high-ranked officials at the Tax Office are also suspects and were released from their positions.
Crisis unquestionably disrupts day-to-day operation of organization, and sooner or later ruins the reputations. A worst crisis can wipe out the organization from its existence just like what happened to Lehman Brothers. As a result of Priok fatal crash, there are already demands to review or to get rid of the existence of Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) including the one from The National Human Rights body.
Many other crises at international corporate level resulted in serious long impact for years. The accident involving Exxon Valdez, a 987-foot tanker that ran aground on a reef at Prince William Sound in 1989 and spilled 260,000 barrels crude oil in Alaska water was one of the worst. According to the council overseeing restoration efforts recently, the water in the area currently "is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill”. It was twenty years after the spill.
If crisis affects the operation and the reputation of organization, a failure of crisis communications management significantly has an effect on the morale of the staff, credibility of the organization, and public trust. Such crisis situations are emergency situations that absolutely require timely and well-planned actions and well-coordinated communications.
The public debate, the controversies, and many ‘new stars’ featured by media in these cases instigate negative public perception on state institutions. As result, state institutions are now under serious public scrutiny and face criticism for scandals and illegalities in which their officials are guilty of wrongdoing and may face civil or criminal liability (Hearit, 2006).
The primary action for any organization in crisis is identifying the real nature of a current crisis, intervening to minimize damage and recovering from the crisis. Crisis response addresses the needs not only of external stakeholders, but also of employees. Employees are the most affected party due to their personal involvement with the organization and emotionally they are the most attached individuals. They should be ‘the ambassador’ of the organization as they part of it. When recovery is underway, they are the ones who can help recovering the organization or they can let the damage happens.
How do the police, The Attorney General Office, and Tax Office act to manage the situation? ‘Cicak and Buaya’ case subsides not because of solution but because there was other cases that emerged and distracted media and public attention. Internal investigations are underway but they are not functioned quickly enough. At the beginning, the police reacted defensively to the allegation that there are officers who get involved in illegal action or wrongdoings. The Tax Office needs weeks to start the investigation of its bureaucrats and The Attorney General Office unhurriedly released prosecutors who have been suspiciously got involved in Gayus case.
Other key element in managing crisis communications is honesty and transparency. Honesty and transparency is fundamental when public sentiment is negatively sensitive and the trust towards organization’s credibility is at stake. In this circumstance, any message sent will be verified by stakeholders with other information they got from other sources. Even worse, some messages will be perceived and responded negatively. This is the time when new media, facebook, twitter, blog and many others, can become the real challenger to honesty. Through this new media, every single person can release information for various purposes without filter that is very much in contrast to traditional media.
The continuous media hype on the wrongdoings of the officials develops into widespread negative perception on state officials and state institutions. This adds up to the poor public impression on various public services provided by state institutions such as the service to obtain ID card, driving license, passport, even in paying tax. This is the time to turn crisis into opportunity. It can start with honesty and transparency. Ignorance towards an honest communications will keep the cases open for further investigation by public in the future. And it will become a harmful page in the history of this country.
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