Communications and Organization Challenges Project - New Jersey Fire

This project analyzes a fire incident in New Jersey, focusing on the communication challenges faced by the city council and public during the crisis. The assignment examines the human factors contributing to communication breakdowns, such as emotional distress and equipment failures, and e...Read More

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Name of the topic: COMMUNICATIONS AND ORGANIZATION CHALLLENGES
Student details:

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In the United States, a company named ABC&YZ situated in New Jersey was caught in
fire where more than 150 employees were working. A cylindrical blast held in the pantry of the
company affected the company’s resources. Employees working there tried to save them by
jumping out of the windows, for not getting into fire. People walking on the streets were shocked
after watching the whole scenario from their eyes. This was shocking for them to watch people
jumping out of the windows. The fire was so dangerous that it expanded over the buildings and
companies nearer to the company. Fire extinguisher got aware of this cause, and after sometime,
the trucks of fire extinguisher came, blow water out of the pipes, and tried to off the fire.
However, the fire made United States to suffer this major loss, which made public and societies
astonished by this situation ( Lloyd & Friedland, 2016). Loss of closed ones made the crowd hurt
and emotionally broken.
This condition surprised Mayor of New Jersey due to which he decided to control the
situation and reached the area. He wanted to communicate with people and decided to relax the
condition after the damage. Nevertheless, he was not able to have a conversation with the
individuals because of the emotional breakdown and shock. Human factors that were creating
issues and problems while communicating with the public were emotional breakdown, lack of
listening, less patience, lack of face-to-face conversion, lack of attention, distractions,
concentration and insignificance to the receiver ( Seligman, 2016).
However, the council overcame these barriers by following some of the training practices
such as leadership practices and media practices to communicate with the people. The political
leaders also took initiative to connect with the crowd and gave speeches to calm down the
condition. This helped them to control the distracted behavior of people. The media and press
tried to gather the information from the political leaders, Mayor and rest of the people about the
situation (Wright, 2016). Mayor and Political leaders here played the role of public spokesperson
who had full knowledge about fire and the damage. For maintaining the public relations, the
spokespersons worked closely with public and hence could be responsible for the community
image of the council. They are responsible for controlling the appearance of the public,
managing conflicts and continue update to the public about the crisis. He must have knowledge
about different ways and perspective to address the media about the updates. Qualifications
required by a spokesperson involves bachelor’s degree in public affairs, communication or

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journalism. Appropriate program comprises business ethics, public speaking, media technology
and cultural communication ( Bridgen & Vercic, 2017). The above were some of the roles and
qualifications required by spokesperson to minimize the rumors, to provide appropriate
information and for providing instructions for handling the changing situation of the damage.
The Mayor and political leaders had full knowledge about the ways to answer the
questions of the media and to handle the poor condition after the fire. The leaders and Mayor
adopted various strategies of communication for connecting with people such as verbal, non-
verbal and visual communication strategies ( Rath & Bharadwaj, 2017). Verbal communication
strategies involved oral communication through phone calls and face-to-face conversations to
connect with public. Non-verbal communication strategy involves giving speeches, physical
space between the communicators and motivating public from the voice of tone. The voice of
tone should be of spokesperson (either the leader or the mayor). Visual strategy involves releases
of media, websites, messages and gathering the pertinent information.
However, while following these methods and strategies, the council faced many problems
related to the equipment’s, tools, lack of power supply and slow working of the network. This
made difficult to inform the people through phone calls and websites ( Idowu, Vertigans, &
Burlea, 2017). As fire burned most of the external sources to communicate with large number of
people, the leaders found it difficult to deliver the information. The council decided to solve this
problem immediately by making alternative power supply available in that region. This helped
the people to collaborate and reduce more chances of the issues that may occur in that condition.

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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
From the above scenario, we concluded that communication plays a significant role at the
time of crisis or damage in the country or state. The public must be updated about the damage,
loss or challenges faced by the public spokesperson while communicating with the public. The
community council faced some of the barriers while communicating to the public.
In case of above essay, it is recommended that there must be a backup plan with the crisis
management team to handle the damage. The leader of the fire extinguisher team could have
announced to aware the public about the areas caught by fire. To solve the issue of the network,
the council must have used the satellite phones for making better decisions to diminish the
effects of the condition.

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REFERENCES
Bridgen, E., & Vercic, D. (2017). Experiencing Public Relations: International Voices.
Routledge.
Idowu, S. O., Vertigans, S., & Burlea, A. S. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility in Times of
Crisis: Practices and Cases from Europe, Africa and the World. Springer.
Lloyd, M., & Friedland, L. A. (2016). The Communication Crisis in America, And How to Fix It.
Springer.
Rath, P., & Bharadwaj, A. (2017). Communication Strategies for Corporate Leaders:
Implications for the Global Market. Taylor & Francis.
Seligman, J. (2016). Effective Communications. Lulu.com.
Wright, B. L. (2016). Communication Skills: Challenges, Importance for Health Care
Professionals and Strategies for Improvement. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated.