Enhancing post-crisis communication through memorials: the case of the bonfire crisis at Texas A&M

Abstract

PurposeThere is a small amount of research that examines the post-crisis communication efforts of organizations (Coombs, 2012). The discourse of renewal has a focus on learning and positive views of the future. However, there have been some efforts to link it with memorials (Veil et al., 2011). More can be done so that memorials and remembering enhance our understanding of the effects of post-crisis communication. This paper analyzes the Texas A&M Bonfire tragedy as an example of how remembrance, through the shared experience of grief and memorializing, communicates renewal and how the narrative of the crisis has been successfully institutionalized within the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe study relies on 12 qualitative interviews with undergraduate students attending Texas A&M.FindingsThe findings indicate that memorials are important facilitators of renewal as they carry multiple messages. The results from the study indicated that the narrative of the Bonfire crisis has been embedded within the organizational culture of A&M through a memorialization process facilitated by renewal discourse. Additionally, renewal was found to influence stakeholder perceptions of crises and to be an underlying force of learning and change following organizational crisis.Originality/valueThe paper explores how an organization presents a past crisis to new stakeholders. This paper explores how stakeholders experience and interpret that post-crisis communication. Additionally, the memorial creates a remembering-forgetting tension as organizations want stakeholders to forget the negatives from a crisis.