Strategic communication : A case study of knowledge management and communication strategies for product defects

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyse how corporations can learn from past issues and corporate crises and to see how they use this knowledge in the management of subsequent issues and corporate crises. Furthermore, the influence of media on the possible intensification of the issue or corporate crisis, but also its impact on the company’s usage of knowledge management, was to be analysed. Method: The study was carried out through a case study method, in the hope of being able to analyze how a company makes use of knowledge management in the communication that occurs during issues and corporate crises. A semi-structured interview was conducted, with the head of public relations of the chosen company as a respondent. The purpose of the interview was to analyze the underlying factors behind a specific way of communicating. Content analysis was made on both press releases, to quantify and see if communication evolved over time, but also in news articles, to see how media's portrayal of different situations had changed with time. Result & conclusions: The study has shown a tendency for companies to use knowledge management in order to make the communication of issues, especially those that are fairly routine and continuous, more effective than beforehand. The more issues a company undergoes, the greater the possibility is of being able to use knowledge management. Another tendency that this study has shown support for is that as much as a company can make use of knowledge management to improve their communications, the media also tends to use knowledge management to facilitate their exposé of issues and corporate crises. This was visualized by the result that media to a greater extent today publishes articles that only contains the information that the company has published in their press releases, as compared to in the beginning of the period being studied, when the media to a greater extent brought in other types of information, which was not depicted in the company’s press releases