Can companies prepare for unforeseen crises? What are the most effective strategies to manage a crisis? What can be done to turn crises into opportunities? How can social media be of use when communicating crises? These are some of the questions that this course tries to answer. It also trains students to be comfortable designing and implementing a crisis communication plan, and analysing and learning from previous crises.

The course takes a two-step approach to communicating and managing crises. First, it familiarises students with some of the most often used theories and models in the field; theory-driven management helps minimise the costs during a crisis and maximise the opportunities for growth after it is resolved. Second, those theories are applied to the analysis of real cases of organisations and institutions hit by a crisis — some successful, some not. The focus is on crisis communication and management in Greater China, with recent examples chosen to show the impact that new media, particularly social networks, have on the way crises are managed.