Multicultural internal crisis communication: tentative framework and research challenges

Multiculturalism in the workforce is increasing, mainly due to migration flows and globalization of businesses. This may pose a challenge to internal crisis communication, as culture seems to influence crisis perceptions and interpretations (Banks 2000) and communication problems intensify in a multicultural context (Falkheimer & Heide, 2006). Nonetheless, multicultural approaches to crisis communication remain underdeveloped in the field, especially when it comes to internal crisis communication. This presentation will focus on multiculturalism in the workplace and on research opportunities regarding multicultural internal crisis communication. Many questions and challenges to researchers arise, for example: • what is “cultural identity” in the workplace? Are the meaning systems mainly related to a language issue, or to more indepth cultural dimensions, or again to context-bound aspects not ascribable to one’s cultural background? • what is the horizon to be taken into account for the cultural contextualization of communication? Pre-crisis preparedness, communication during the crisis event, post-crisis communication, or all of them? The interpersonal or the mediated communication level? Which “local” context and culture, where local might imply a focus on nation-state or organizational boundaries (especially for multinational companies)? • in practice, how do communication managers perceive the role of multiculturalism in the workplace? To what extent do they design culturally sensitive internal crisis communication, and evaluate its efficacy? • and how do multicultural employees define culture themselves? What are their communication needs and expectations? How do they react in case of crisis, and what aspects of internal crisis communication do they value? On the whole, audience-oriented (Lee 2004; Falkheimer & Heide, 2009) and multi-vocal (Frandsen & Johansen, 2009) approaches seem pivotal in the study of internal crisis communication in a multicultural environment. The presentation will articulate and expand these questions and reflections and put forward ideas for empirical research to be discussed with participants.