Crisis PR Management at Shell Mauritius Limited (SML)

This particular section will assess the role of Shell’s PR practitioner as a crisis manager. In the first part, we will consider the perception of this aspect at SML, how it is dealt with and then we will use the 3Ps: Prevention, Preparation and Provision as benchmarks for assessment purposes.

The Institute of Crisis Management (ICM) defines a crisis as a “significant business disruption, which stimulates extensive news media coverage.” (http://www.crisisexperts.com)

At SML, though, depending on the level of risk involved and the probability of occurrence (i.e., time scale), two different appellations have been given to such probable calamities. In fact, the ‘crisis management’ and ‘issue management’ concepts used at SML are just different words which bear the same meaning as Jefkins’ (1998) 2 kinds of possible crisis namely, ‘unlikely’ and ‘likely’ respectively.

Thus, at SML, ‘crisis management’, as they understand it, is a rather broad and va...