Stages of organizational response to scandals

Posted by Perry on July 12, 2010 at 17:34:54

A former Benedictine monk wrote a good analysis of the Catholic clergy abuse crisis, which I think is also applicable to TFI. I've excerpted the first two paragraphs below. You can read the entire article on my website at this permanent link:



or for those who don't like to visit my site the article for now is also at:



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National Catholic Reporter - July 9, 2010

Scandal vs. crisis; PR vs. raw data

Ron Westrum, professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, suggests that organizations react in a series of stages to “anomalous reports.” They are: 1) suppression, 2) encapsulation, 3) public relations, 4) local fix, 5) global fix, and 6) investigation of root causes. He came to his formulation through the study of the battered child syndrome that many people, even professionals, found hard to admit was a widespread phenomenon.

It is not difficult to match the trajectory of church response to allegations of hidden clergy sex abuse against Westrum’s model. It’s a good fit.

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