University of Northern Colorado Scholarship & Creative Works @ Digital UNC Dissertations Student Research 8-28-2019 University President Discourse After an On-Campus Crisis Andrea DeCosmo andrea.com Follow this and additional works at: https://digscholarship.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation DeCosmo, Andrea, "University President Discourse After an On-Campus Crisis" (2019).edu/dissertations/578 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at Scholarship & Creative Works @ Digital UNC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship & Creative Works @ Digital UNC. For more information, please contact Jane. © 2019 ANDREA RENEE DECOSMO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN COLORADO Greeley, Colorado The Graduate School UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT DISCOURSE AFTER AN ON-CAMPUS CRISIS A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Andrea Renee DeCosmo College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Department of Leadership, Policy and Development: Higher Education and P-12 Education Higher Education and Student Affairs Leadership December 2019 This Dissertation by: Andrea Renee DeCosmo Entitled: University President Discourse After an On-Campus Crisis has been approved as meeting the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Leadership, Policy and Development: Higher Education and P-12 Education, Program of Higher Education and Student Affairs Leadership Accepted by the Doctoral Committee ___________________________________________________________ Matthew Birnbaum, Ph., Research Advisor ___________________________________________________________ Gardiner Tucker, Ph., Committee Member ___________________________________________________________ Travis Boyce, Ph., Committee Member ___________________________________________________________ Nancy Sileo, Ed., Faculty Representative Date of Dissertation Defense___________________________________ Accepted by the Graduate School ________________________________________________________ Cindy Wesley, Ph.
Interim Associate Provost and Dean The Graduate School and International Admissions ABSTRACT DeCosmo, Andrea R. University President Discourse After an On-Campus Crisis. Published Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 2019. The presidents of higher education institutions (HEIs) may, at some point during their tenure, be faced with managing a crisis such as a natural disaster, an individual or group intending to harm the campus community, or a large-scale accident or student protest.
While leadership can take on many forms in daily life, leadership after crisis requires communication with stakeholders and the media, and may help or hinder crisis recovery (Hincker, 2014). Understanding the elements included in HEI president post- crisis discourse may help presidents and crisis managers formulate a comprehensive crisis communication strategy, moreover, it provides the higher education community the opportunity to learn from presidents’ experiences so that we may be better prepared to communicate post-crisis. This study focused on university president discourse after an on-campus crisis and explored four crisis types: environmental, intentional, accidental, and student protest. Three cases were considered under each crisis type, for a total of 12 cases.
Data included transcripts from speeches, press conferences, press releases and interviews, written statements, authored articles, and emails from the president starting the day the crisis impacted the HEI through one year after. Use of framing devices, recommended strategies from situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), and other emergent themes were explored. Findings were compared within and between each crisis iii type. While framing devices were present in the HEI president discourse of all 12 cases, presidents leading their HEI through an environmental crisis used them most often.
Of the four crisis types considered, presidents leading their institution through environmental crises used recommended SCCT strategies in their discourse, while the discourse of presidents leading after the other crisis types included strategies that were misaligned. Major themes identified in the presidents’ discourse included positivity from environmental crisis cases, and messages of family and community from accidental crisis cases, but common themes within intentional and student protest cases were not found. Results from this study can assist current and future HEI presidents who are faced with managing a crisis by creating awareness of framing devices and SCCT recommendations and informing how they can be used to communicate, support, and lead after particular types of crises. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone who helped support me throughout my doctoral journey, especially the dissertation portion.
To my research advisor, Dr. Matt Birnbaum, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude for your support and assistance to make this the best study possible. Somehow you always knew when I needed to be challenged, when I needed a pep talk, when I needed guidance, when I needed to think deeper, or when I needed time to face life-obstacles that came my way throughout this process. To the rest of my committee members, Dr.
Gardiner “Tuck” Tucker, Dr. Nancy Sileo, and Dr. Travis Boyce, thank you for serving on my committee and for the many, many hours you spent reviewing my work and providing feedback. Your support, positivity, and expertise were invaluable.
To my colleagues at Front Range Community College, thank you for your encouragement and enthusiasm, you were wonderful cheerleaders and your support meant everything to me. Every time one of you took the time to ask how things were going, it gave me a needed boost of energy and the confidence to continue. To my children, Anthony and Elizabeth, words cannot describe how much I love and appreciate both of you. You celebrated every step of this process with me, which meant the world to me.
I will always remember every time one of you walked by my office and said, “You’ve got this, mom,” as I sat at my desk working. Anthony, I will also always remember the day we were out running errands and I bounced topic ideas and v thoughts off you, our conversation led to my eventual topic. Elizabeth, thank you for all the times you cleaned up dinner, took care of the dogs, or completed some other task so that I would have more time to work on this every evening. The time we got to spend together at the end of each day’s work-time was so very special to me.
Finally, to the campus communities of each of the 12 crises I studied, especially victims and their families, please accept my sympathies for the loss, pain, anxiety, or suffering you endured during or after these crises. I acknowledge and admire your strength, courage and resilience. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. 1 Background to the Topic………………………………….
3 Purpose of the Study……………………………………… 7 Significance of the Study…………………………………. 11 Types of Crises…………………………………………… 14 Research Design Overview………………………………. 17 Researcher Perspective…………………………………… 18 Summary and Overview…………………………………. LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………… 20 Introduction……………………………………………….
29 President Leadership During Crisis……………………… 34 President Discourse During and After Crisis………. 42 Situational Crisis Communication Theory………………. 67 Methodology: Comparative Case Study…………………. 71 Methods: Content Analysis……………………………….
96 Environmental Crises……………………………………… 97 Intentional Crises…………………………………………. 198 Student Protest Crises……………………………………. 233 Summary of Research Question Findings………………… 268 vii CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION……………………………………………………… 282 Summary of Study………………………………………….
282 Findings Related to the Literature…………………………. 294 Recommendations for Future Research…………………… 296 Conclusion………………………………………………… 298 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………. 300 viii LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1. Framing Device Findings……………………………………….
SCCT Recommendation Alignment……………………………. Other Emergent Themes…………………………………………. Summary of Findings……………………………………………. 280 ix 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Mass shootings, natural disasters, and accidental deaths are unfortunate realities in our world.
With the development of social media, news of a crisis spreads quickly and may reach large populations even while the crisis is ongoing. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are not immune to crises and many campus communities have experienced hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes, hazing deaths, mass shootings, large- scale student protests, and catastrophic accidents. During crisis, and in its aftermath, people and communities often expect leaders to provide direction, information, comfort, and strength (Foote, 1996). When a crisis occurs on a campus, the community often expects its president to guide the institution through the event and its recovery by providing strength, comfort, and confidence, by acting as the HEI’s spokesperson and by taking quick and appropriate action (Bion & Hart, 2003; Hincker, 2014).
The way in which a president handles a crisis can impact the ability of the HEI to fulfill its mission effectively, as well as the president’s and the institution’s legacy. A poorly managed crisis can quickly become a scandal, tarnish the HEI’s reputation, create further harm to a community, and even end a presidency (deVise, 2011). While most HEIs have crisis management teams and plans in place, and most presidents receive preparation and guidance regarding crisis management, presidents wish they had more training on how to manage a crisis (Ono, 2016). This is a difficult request to fulfill for HEI presidents who may only handle one major crisis.
2 Key elements for successfully managing a crisis include communicating to the public clearly, authentically, soon, and often, while incorporating language to provide direction, calm fears, restore confidence, and show both strength and sympathy to victims and their families (Klann, 2003). Presidents therefore have important symbolic functions to play during a crisis and a significant portion of this role involves formal and informal communications. Communications, which for the purposes of this study I defined as spoken or written discourse, can be separated into public and private. Public communications may include speeches, press conferences, interviews, and opinion pieces intended for an external audience such as alumni, donors, and members of the surrounding community, while private communications may include letters, announcements, and emails for internal stakeholders such as students, faculty, staff, and parents.
Crisis situations create a public demand for information (Coombs, 2006). Yet, after a crisis, many presidents either do not know what to say, or fear saying the wrong thing, so they may wait too long to respond or say nothing at all (White, 2009). When crisis communication is not proactively managed by the HEI, the media can begin to fill in the gaps with increasingly negative assumptions about the institution and its leadership, thus influencing public perception of the crisis (White, 2009), possibly making the crisis even worse for the institution and the president to overcome. Crisis communication theory suggests specific crisis response strategies based on the type of crisis a community experiences, but research typically focuses on such strategies with crises in the corporate world or the private sector, not higher education (Benoit, 1997; Coombs, 2006).
3 HEI presidents report a lack of knowledge about and confidence in communicating about a crisis (Ono, 2016). The consequences for mishandling a crisis are severe and may include altering the institution’s mission, future, and legacy, and the president’s career (deVise, 2011). When presidents learn or hear about colleagues who mishandled a crisis that impacted their institution or career, they may become even less confident in their own knowledge and crisis communication abilities than before. Then, if a crisis occurs, the presidents’ lack of knowledge and confidence or fear may cause them to mishandle the crisis communication or fail to respond, thus impacting crisis recovery at their own institution (White, 2009) and causing other presidents observing the events to grow more unconfident.
The cycle of lack of knowledge and confidence about how to communicate about a crisis, possibly leading to mishandling crises, leading to a greater lack of knowledge and confidence may continue to be a problem in the HEI presidency, and the institutions they lead, unless scholarly research can begin making stronger connections between crisis communication theory and presidents. This post-positivist comparative case study used content analysis to analyze HEI president discourse after an on-campus crisis. Content analysis revealed the key elements contained in post-crisis communication such as those described in the previous paragraph including providing instructions, information, and comfort. Additionally, content analysis was helpful to determine which types of audiences received which messages, and at what point during crisis recovery.
Background to the Topic Like corporate CEOs, many HEI presidents will need to respond to crises that bring harm to the entity for which they have responsibility (Hincker, 2012). In the 4 private sector, the field of crisis management and related research expanded in the aftermath of the 1982 incident in which seven people in the Chicago area died from cyanide poisoning by ingesting the Johnson & Johnson product Extra-Strength Tylenol (Wang & Hutchins, 2010).