Global and Multicultural Public Relations

8Cross‐national Conflict Shifting: How to Manage Transnational Crises

Keywords

transnational crisis; cross‐national conflict shift; issues management; corporate responses; global news flow; home publics; transnational publics; host publics; localized responses; localization of news

Central Themes

• Multinational corporations (MNCs) that operate across borders in multiple world locations face a variety of environments and issues that challenge their survival and sustainability.
• Having operations in multiple locations indicates that when a significant crisis breaks in one part of the world, it will immediately be known in others.
• MNCs must make decisions, take actions, and communicate about a transnational crisis at home (headquarters) and in host locations. They need to address the concerns, need for information, and demands of accountability from home, transnational (global activists), and host publics.
• Transnational crises (a.k.a. cross‐national conflicts) have financial and reputational consequences for the MNCs involved, whose impact may be greater if the crisis or conflict is handled poorly or the corporation is slow and inconsistent in its responses and actions.
• Global public relations professionals at agencies or in‐house departments have the responsibility to understand their organization's, or their client's, business and world environments, with the aim of identifying, tracking, and managing issues to prevent transnational crises.
• Reliable information and data are ...