危机管理-预防-诊断和干预-毕业论文.doc

毕业论文（设计）外文翻译
题　　目：　　　　　　 品牌危机及其对策研究　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
一、外文原文
标题：Crisis management: prevention, diagnosis and intervention
原文：The premise of this paper is that crises can be managed much more effectively if the company prepares for them. Therefore, the paper shall review some recent crises, the way they were dealt with, and what can be learned from them. Later, we shall deal with the anatomy of a crisis by looking at some symptoms, and lastly discuss the stages of a crisis and recommend methods for prevention and intervention.
Crisis acknowledgment
Although many business leaders will acknowledge that crises are a given for virtually every business firm, many of these firms do not take productive steps to address crisis situations. As one survey of Chief Executive officers of Fortune 500 companies discovered, 85 percent said that a crisis in business is inevitable, but only 50 percent of these had taken any productive action in preparing a crisis plan (Augustine, 1995). Companies generally go to great lengths to plan their financial growth and success. But when it comes to crisis management, they often fail to think and prepare for those eventualities that may lead to a company’s total failure. Safety violations, plants in need of repairs, union contracts, management succession, and choosing a brand name, etc. can become crises for which many companies fail to be prepared until it is too late.
The tendency, in general, is to look at the company as a perpetual entity that requires plans for growth. Ignoring the probabilities of disaster is not going to eliminate or delay their occurrences. Strategic planning without inclusion of crisis management is like sustaining life without guaranteeing life. One reason so many companies fail to take steps to proactively plan for crisis events, is that they fail to acknowledge the possibility of a disaster occurring. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, they simply choose to ignore the situation, with the hope that by not talking about it, it will not come to pass. Hal Walker, a management consultant, points out “that decisions will be more rational and better received, and the crisis will be of shorter duration, for companies who prepare a proactive crisis plan” (Maynard, 1993) .
It is said that “there are two kinds of crises: those that you manage, and those that manage you” (Augustine, 1995). Proactive planning helps managers to control and resolve a crisis. Ignoring the possibility of a crisis, on the other hand, could lead to the crisis taking a life of its own. In 1979, the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant experienced a crisis when warning signals indicated nuclear reactors were at risk of a meltdown. The system was equipped with a hundred or more different alarms and they all went off. But for those who should have taken the necessary steps to resolve the situation, there were no planned instructions as to what should be done first. Hence, the crisis was not acknowledged in the beginning and it became a chronic event.
In June 1997, Nike faced a crisis for which they had no existing frame of reference. A new design on the company’s Summer Hoop line of basketball shoes - with the word air written in flaming letters - had sparked a protest by Muslims, who complained the logo resembled the Arabic word for Allah, or God. The council of American-Islamic Relations threatened a global Nike boycott. Nike apologized, recalled 38,000 pairs of shoes, and discontinued the line (Brindley, 1997). To create the brand, Nike had spent a considerable amount of time and money, but had never put together a general framework or policy to deal with such controversies. To their dismay, and financial loss, Nike officials had no choice but to react to the crisis. This incident has definitely signaled to the company that spending a little more time would have prevented the crisis. Nonetheless, it has taught the company a lesson in strategic crisis management planning.
In a business organization, symptoms or signals can alert the strategic planners or executives of an eminent crisis. Slipping market share, losing strategic synergy and diminishing productivity per man hour, as well as trends, issues and developments in the socio-economic, political and competitive environments, can signal crises, the effects of which can be very detrimental. After all, business failures and bankruptcies are not intended. They do not usually happen overnight. They occur more because of the lack of attention to symptoms than any other factor.
Stages of a crisis
Most crises do not occur suddenly. The signals can usually be picked up and the symptoms checked as they emerge. A company determined to address these issues realizes that the real challenge is not just to recognize crises, but to recognize them in a timely fashion (Darling et al., 1996). A crisis can consist of four different and distinct stages (Fink, 1986). The phases are: prodromal crisis stage, acute crisis stage, chronic crisis stage and crisis resolution stage.
Modern organizations are often called “organic” due to the fact that they are not immune from the elements of their surrounding environments. Very much like a living organism, organizations can be affected by environmental factors both positively and negatively. But today’s successful organizations are characterized by the ability to adapt by recognizing important environmental factors, analyzing them, evaluating the impacts and reacting to them. The art of strategic planning (as it relates to crisis management) involves all of the above activities. The right strategy, in general, provides for preventive measures, and treatment or resolution efforts both proactively and reactively. It would be quite appropriate to examine the first three stages of a crisis before taking up the treatment, resolution or intervention stage.
Prodromal crisis stage
In the field of medicine, a prodrome is a symptom of the onset of a disease. It gives a warning signal. In business organizations, the warning lights are always blinking. No matter how successful the organization, a number of issues and trends may concern the business if proper and timely attention is paid to them. For example, in 1995, Baring Bank, a UK financial institution which had been in existence since 1763, suddenly and unexpectedly failed. There was ample opportunity for the bank to catch the signals that something bad was on the horizon, but the company’s efforts to detect that were thwarted by an internal structure that allowed a single employee both to conduct and to oversee his own investment trades, and the breakdown of management oversight and internal control systems (Mitroff et al., 1996). Likewise, looking in retrospect, McDonald’s fast food chain was given the prodromal symptoms before the elderly lady sued them for the spilling of a very hot cup of coffee on her lap - an event that resulted in a substantial financial loss and tarnished image of the company. Numerous consumers had complained about the temperature of the coffee. The warning light was on, but the company did not pay attention. It would have been much simpler to pick up the signal, or to check the symptom, than facing the consequences.
In another case, Jack in the Box, a fast food chain, had several customers suffer intestinal distress after eating at their restaurants. The prodromal symptom was there, but the company took evasive action. Their initial approach was to look around for someone to blame. The lack of attention, the evasiveness and the carelessness angered all the constituent groups, including their customers. The unfortunate deaths that occurred as a result of the company’s ignoring the symptoms, and the financial losses that followed, caused the company to realize that it would have been easier to manage the crisis directly in the prodromal stage rather than trying to shift the blame.
Acute crisis stage
A prodromal stage may be oblique and hard to detect. The examples given above, are obvious prodromal, but no action was taken until an acute stage occurred. According to the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, an acute stage occurs when a symptom “demands urgent attention.” Whether the acute symptom emerges suddenly or is a transformation of a prodromal stage, an immediate action is required. Diverting funds and other resources to this emerging situation may cause disequilibrium and disturbance in the whole system. It is only those organizations that have already prepared a framework for these crises that can sustain their normal operations. For example, the US public roads and bridges have for a long time reflected a prodromal stage of crisis awareness by showing cracks and occasionally a collapse. It is perhaps in light of the obsessive decision to balance the Federal budget that reacting to the problem has been delayed and ignored. This situation has entered an acute stage and at the time of this writing, it was reported that a bridge in Maryland had just collapsed.
The reason why prodromes are so important to catch is that it is much easier to manage a crisis in this stage. In the case of most crises, it is much easier and more reliable to take care of the problem before it becomes acute, before it erupts and causes possible complications (Darling et al., 1996). In an acute stage, management can only take action to control the damage. However, the losses are incurred. Intel, the largest producer of computer chips in the USA, had to pay an expensive price for initially refusing to recall computer chips that proved unreliable on certain calculations. The firm attempted to play the issue down and later learned its lesson. At an acute stage, when accusations were made that the Pentium Chips were not as fast as they claimed, Intel quickly admitted the problem, apologized for it, and set about fixing it (Mitroff et al., 1996).
Chronic crisis stage
During this stage, the symptoms are quite evident and always present. It is a period of “make or break.” Being the third stage, chronic problems may prompt the company’s management to once and for all do something about the situation. It may be the beginning of recovery for some firms, and a death knell for others. For example, the Chrysler Corporation was only marginally successful throughout the 1970s. It was not, however, until the company was nearly bankrupt that a management shake-out occurred. The drawback at the chronic stage is that, like in a human patient, the company may get used to “quick fixes” and “band-aid” approaches. After all, the ailment, the problem and the crisis have become an integral part of the body of the organization. Either the organization is so overwhelmed by prodromal and acute problems that no time or attention is paid to the chronic problems, or the managers perceive the situation to be tolerable, thus putting the crisis on a back burner.
Crisis resolution
Crises could be detected at various stages of their development. Since the existing symptoms may be related to different problems or crises, there is a great possibility that they may be misinterpreted. Therefore, the people in charge may believe they have resolved the problem. However, in practice the symptom is often neglected. In such situations, the symptom will offer another chance for resolution when it becomes acute, thereby demanding urgent care. Studies indicate that today an increasing number of companies are issue-oriented and search for symptoms. Nevertheless, the lack of experience in resolving a situation and/or inappropriate handling of a crisis can lead to a chronic stage. Of course, there is this last opportunity to resolve the crisis at the chronic stage. No attempt to resolve the crisis, or improper resolution, can lead to grim consequences that will ultimately plague the organization or even destroy it.
It must be noted that an unsolved crisis may not destroy the company. But, its weakening effects can ripple through the organization and create a host of other complications.
Preventive efforts
The heart of the resolution of a crisis is in the preventive efforts the company has initiated. This step, similar to a human body, is actually the least expensive, but quite often the most overlooked. Preventive measures deal with sensing potential problems (Gonzales-Herrero and Pratt, 1995). Major internal functions of a company such as finance, production, procurement, operations, marketing and human resources are sensitive to the socio-economic, political-legal, competitive, technological, demographic, global and ethical factors of the external environment. What is imminently more sensible and much more manageable, is to identify the processes necessary for assessing and dealing with future crises as they arise (Jackson and Schantz, 1993). At the core of this process are appropriate information systems, planning procedures, and decision-making techniques. A soundly-based information system will scan the environment, gather appropriate data, interpret this data into opportunities and challenges, and provide a concrete foundation for strategies that could function as much to avoid crises as to intervene and resolve them.
Preventive efforts, as stated before, require preparations before any crisis symptoms set in. Generally strategic forecasting, contingency planning, issues analysis, and scenario analysis help to provide a framework that could be used in avoiding and encountering crises.
出处：Toby J. Kash and John R. Darling . Crisis management: prevention, diagnosis and intervention[J] Leadership & Organization Development Journal . 1998.19(4), PP. 179-186

二、翻译文章
标题：危机管理：预防，诊断和干预
译文：本文的前提是，如果该公司做好准备得话，危机可以更有效地进行管理。因此，本文将回顾最近的一些危机，包括他们处理的方式以及从中得到的教训。接着，我们将会通过看一些危机的剖析来处理危机，最后讨论危机阶段，并提出预防和干预的方法。
危机的确认
尽管许多企业领导者承认，危机是一个公司必然要经历的，许多企业却不采取一些措施来解决危机局势。正如关于一项财富500强公司的行政总裁的调查显示，85%的总裁表示，一个企业危机是不可避免的，但其中只有50%的总裁采取了应对危机的计划。公司通常不遗余力地规划自己的财务增长和成功，但是，当涉及到危机管理，他们往往没有考虑以及危机事件做好准备，这样可能导致公司的彻底失败。 违反安全规定，植物需要修理，工会合同，管理层继任，和选择一个品牌等可以成为危机，但许多公司没有做好准备，直到为时已晚。
目前的趋势，一般来说，把公司看作为一个永久的实体，而且需要发展计划。危机的发生概率是不会消除或延迟其发生。企业的战略管理没有纳入危机规划就像是维持生命的生活没有保障。这么多的公司未能采取措施，主动规划的危机事件的原因在于他们不承认灾害发生的可能性。就像鸵鸟一样一头扎入沙子中，他们干脆选择了忽略这种情况，并希望不谈论它。哈尔沃克管理顾问指出“企业的决定应该更加理性和能被更好接收，这场危机将是持续时间较短的，企业应该主动的准备应付危机的计划”（梅纳德，1993）。
有人说，“有两种危机：一种是你管理，而另一种是管理你”（奥古斯丁，1995）。主动规划可以帮助管理者控制和解决危机。无视危机发生的可能性的，从另一方面来说可能导致企业倒闭。1979年，三里岛核电厂经历了危机的预警信号时，信号表示核反应堆是一个危险的危机。该系统配备了一百多个不同的警报，但是，对于那些谁应该采取必要的步骤来解决这一问题，有没有计划要先做说明没有得到明确的实施。因此，危机是在不确定下开始以及它将会成为一个长期的事件。
1997年6月，耐克公司面临危机，但他们并没有参考现有的框架。字母-篮球鞋-一种以单词写在燃烧空气的新设计引起穆斯林抗议，他们抱怨耐克公司模仿真主的标志。美国伊斯兰对外关系委员会呼吁全球抵制耐克。 耐克公司表示道歉，并召回3.8万双鞋子和停止生产线（布林德利，1997）。 为创建品牌，耐克花了大量时间和金钱，但从来没有一起提出一个总的框架或政策来处理这些争议。 令他们失望的是，面对企业的经济损失，耐克的官员不得不作出反应的危机。 这一事件标志着这场危机公司肯定要花多一点时间将会阻止。然而，它真正给了该公司的是在战略危机管理规划上的教训。
在一个商业组织中，症状或信号可以提醒战略规划者或杰出的危机管理人员。 不稳定的市场份额，战略协同的失去和每人每小时劳动生产率的递减，以及社会的经济问题和经济的发展趋势，政治和竞争环境等因素都可以是危机的信号，其影响可能是非常有害的。 毕竟，企业倒闭和破产的并不是企业的本意。，而且他们通常不会在一夜之间发生。 他们发生的因素更多的是因为缺乏对其他症状的