Writing Assignment Guidelines:
You are one of 20 interns at COMPANY X, and because of all of the corporate crises in the news lately, your boss has given each of you an assignment: pick a past corporate crisis, and write an essay analyzing how the company involved responded to the crisis. Specifically, you must write a five-paragraph essay that argues whether your chosen company managed its crisis EFFECTIVELY or INEFFECTIVELY—you must chose one or the other— and identifies three specific reasons to justify that assertion.
That is, you will choose ONE of the following stances:
Crisis management was… Because
EFFECTIVE
Pick three reasons why the company was effective at managing the crisis and successful at repairing its reputation.
INEFFECTIVE
Pick three reasons why the company was ineffective at managing the crisis and consequently failed to repair its reputation.
***See thesis example and further guidelinesbelow***
Background:
After a crisis that negatively affects stakeholders, a company often has to rebut damaging media reports and present itself as positively as possible to repair its image.
In this writing assignment, you will continue applyingthe research and analytical skills you used for your Crisis Management Presentation to analyze your chosen company’s effectiveness in responding to its crisis.
Paper Requirements
Your paper will include:
1. An introduction that synopsizes the crisis in 3-4 sentences and concludes with a thesis statement that asserts three claims about how/why the company was (in)effective in its crisis management.
2. Three body paragraphs, each of which argues one of your three claims.
3. A conclusion that restates your thesis and then offers information about where the company is today in no more than 3-4 sentences.
Formatting Requirements—READ CAREFULLY
1. Cite all sources using APA Style. An APA style guide is on Blackboard (Only the citations need to be in APA style; the paper itself does not need to be written in APA style.)
2. No more than 4 pages (not including Works Cited page, which can be a fifth page)
3. 12 point Times New Roman or Calibri font, double spaced
4. 1-inch page margins for top/bottom and left/right
5. Your header should appear at the top of the first page,RIGHT JUSTIFIED and SINGLE SPACED – see example bolded below:
(Student Name)
BA 2196 Section (identify)/(Professor Name)
Writing Assignment: Crisis Communicatio
***ESTABLISHING YOUR THESIS***
You must assert a thesis—1 sentence—arguing your 3 claims articulating why the company effectively or ineffectively managed its crisis (NOTE:Each strategy claim—you’ll have 3 total—consists of bothWHAT (ACTION) and WHY (INTERPRETATION)details)
o Example of REQUIRED THESIS SETUP:“Johnson & Johnson effectively managed its crisis in the following ways: bypreemptively recalling Tylenol nationwide, the company showed that it cared more about public safety than about profit; by innovating the new safety measure of sealed bottles before putting Tylenol back on the market, the company reassured customers that the crisis could not happen again; and by calling attention to its corporate credo in its apology, the company implied transparency and honesty to consumers.”
