Role-Playing a Public Relations Crisis

Crisis management affects all institutions. Organizations now operate in a media-saturated world where individuals can disseminate information instantaneously across the globe via the internet. As a result, ensuring future business leaders have an understanding of how crises develop and what alternatives exist is a valuable educational outcome. Through a role-playing exercise, students undertake crisis management for a fictitious organization. The exercise, according to participants, provides a realistic environment where higher level learning (as compared w th merely listening to lectures) resulted. Role-playing also improved student awareness of the components of good crisis management and prepared them to handle a crisis.