"Det händer inte oss" : Värdet av kriskommunikation och mediehantering

Purpose: The study aims to analyze how companies can learn from past communications in critical situations and during corporate crisis, and see how they use this knowledge in the management of subsequent critical situations and corporate crisis. Furthermore, the media is analyzed to see how the newspaper industry chooses to reflect an organization and its actions, and also to see if the pressure through articles in the newspapers has an impact on the extent of the situation. Method: A qualitative case study of Sweden’s largest food company, ICA Sverige AB, where knowledgeable people in media management within the company are interviewed using semi-structured interviews, with support of quantitative methods by a collection of articles from the news press. Theories: Concepts, theories and models in crisis management and communication has been applied to relevant data. These comprise Knowledge Management, a communication template in crisis management, The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and the model Content of crisis communication. Empiric: Based on the quantitative data consisting of articles from four Swedish news sources: Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and Expressen, a semi-structured interview guide was created and carried out with the person within ICA who possesses knowledge of the subject area. Conclusion: ICA has during the priod studied exhibited to have used the concept of Knowledge Management in the development of their routines regarding product recalls at product defects. The relationships between ICA and the media have shown improvements, which has resulted in ICA percieve the media coverage as balanced, true and fair