Case Study: Analyzing Qantas Disaster, Communication & Recommendations

This case study examines the Qantas Airlines disasters and their impact on the company's brand value and customer trust. It emphasizes the importance of regaining trust and creating a positive public perception through effective management communication. The study recommends five key steps: acknowledging past faults and seeking apologies, assigning a committee to determine the causes of disasters, identifying allies and rivals wisely, providing compensation to affected families, and creating a taskforce to expose competitor's negative aspects. The case study also highlights the role of social media in rebuilding the company's reputation and suggests strategies for conducting promotional activities, such as contests, to avoid negative situations. Furthermore, it outlines communication objectives, audience, methods, and timing for various stakeholders, including consumers, management, employees, and external stakeholders. The document includes references to relevant organizational development and management communication literature.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION CASE STUDY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
To: recipient of the MEMO
From: (writer’s name)
Subject: Qantas disaster analysis and recommendations
The most crucial thing for a company is to regain its trust and create a positive perception among
the customers. It is not only important for their revenue generation but also for the brand name
that gets affected due to some negative situation or problems, which the leadership was unable to
detect and take corrective action against that (Hatch 2018). Qantas Airlines also had to suffer
from some severe disasters in their past that decreased their brand value and they loss the trust of
consumers. The negative impact of those disasters on the customer’s psychology was such that
when the company tried to organize a contest to provide few selected consumers with their best
service, negative comments were coming up from them instead encouraging positive responses.
Hence, to build a positive public perception, the airlines company should implement five steps so
that people can start building trust on them.
Firstly, the organization should acknowledge their past faults and seek apology from the service
users so that they can start a fresh with new projects, new management and new leadership. The
company should also assign a committee to determine the cause and effect of the disaster
occurred in their organization. Therefore, with this method, they will be able to proof that for the
organization, the safety and comfort of their customers are superior to their organizational
structure and to find the reason for the disaster they can enquire their own system too
(Cummings and Worley 2014).

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Secondly, the organization had a history of conflicts with its partners, hence, the leadership
should identify its friend and rival organization wisely, as in negative company, and the
organization can lose its remaining reputation (Kumar 2012).
The company should not focus on advertisements and promotional campaigns as in such
situation customers do not trust organizations having negative image. However, the organization
should focus on empathy and should provide compensation to affected families so that it can
diminish their grudges against the organization (Cummings and Worley 2014).
The company should act fast as in such situation competitors acts negatively to acquire the
consumer base of affected organization. Hence, the organization should create a taskforce that
can expose their competitor’s negative aspects. This will help to create a positive perspective
about the organization.
While these aspects are in the pipeline, the leadership should decide a unique and bold move
with the help of honest and efficient employees so that the company’s reputation can be rebuilt
(Jiang et al. 2012).
Social media is a platform where without any effective capital and effort, the company can
generate a positive perception regarding the organization. However, during this, the companies
also need to focus on several steps so that while conducting any promotional activity such as
contexts and quizzes, the company do not face any negative situation so that their reputation
decreases (Rummler and Brache 2012).
The company should be clear about their objective of conducting the contest and should target on
one aspects such as either to develop public relations or for the marketing and publicity aspect.

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While using Facebook and twitter, the consumers generally do not like ads or interruptions,
however if any ad comes with such contest that can benefit them, they take part in it. Hence, the
company should create the contest having such consumers in their mind (Dutton and Ragins
2017).
The company should target a specific population, specific customer groups for such contest and
should organize 5 or more sessions of it for each section of their consumer base. This is because,
the consumers are divided depending on their ability to spend, their relationship with the
organization and other factors. However, creating generalized contest possess the higher chance
of affecting one or more consumer group (Jiang et al. 2012).
The company should have conduct a research prior to generate such competition. Further they
should compile a list of 3 to 5 main competition topic for their consumers. Research should be
done as per the fan base and posting frequency and support. Therefore, through this the company
will be able to get previous idea of the contest results and they will be able to prepare themselves
for the next round of it (Hatch 2018).
Objective of the communication are to made the sponsors and partners of the Qantas aware about
the new process and action plan of the organization, communication of expectation of
performances to the team and management, communicate the internal issues and
acknowledgement process to the entire Qantas team.
Audience of communication are the external stakeholders, the consumers, partners and sponsors
Primary communication method:

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Reports, posters, emails, team meetings and notification
Audienc
e
Timing Desired
outcome
s
Medium
and the data
Frequency Source Sender Key
message
s
Consum
ers
Immediat
ely as the
company
had a
past
history of
blunders
Safe and
secure
process
without
any
consumer
harm
Project status
summary
They should
be provided
report
online
monthly
related to
their process
achievement
s and
improvemen
ts
Organization
leader or the
CEO of the
organization
Olivia Wirth
the executive
of government
and
corporative
affairs of
Qantas airlines
Olivia
Wirth the
executive
of
governme
nt and
corporativ
e affairs of
Qantas
airlines ,
Safe and
secure
process
details
Manage
ment
The
managem
ent
should be
able to
observe
the
change in
6 months
Revenue
with
consumer
security,
increased
project
security,
issues
and
lowered
risks
Project status
summary
Managemen
t should
conduct a
meeting
monthly,
with all the
employees
and
assigned
teams
related to
the new and
developed
process.
Reports, charts
of the
organization,
data of targets
achievement
Employee
representa
tive or
team
executive
project
security,
consume
r
security
related
data
External
stakehol
ders
External
stakehold
ers
should be
able to
see the
change
within 6
months
Progresse
d project,
less
impact on
consumer
s
Detailed
informati
on related
to the
new and
Status
summary,
meetings
question
answers,
personal
interviews,
frequently
asked
question by
the team
meetings
The external
stake
holders too
should be
called for a
meeting
monthly so
that data of
one month
can be
provided to
them
Project
leader,
organizati
on head,
departmen
t manager,
project
sponsor
leader
Detailed
informat
ion
related
to the
new and
previous
project
related
data

5MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
previous
project ,
positive
impact on
working
environm
ent,
positive
mouth of
words for
the
organizat
ion
Tea
ms
Teams
will be
preparing
themselv
es for
change
and be
able to
feel it
within
weeks of
newer
process
Increased
organizat
ion
revenue
with
increased
team
felicitatio
n
Team
meeting
status report
It should be
conducted
weekly so
that at the
month end a
detailed
report can
be generated
Olivia Wirth
the executive
of government
and
corporative
affairs of
Qantas airlines
Teams or
employee
representa
tive
The
number
of team
member
s and
felicitati
on
program
s related
data

6MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
References
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage
learning.
Dutton, J.E. and Ragins, B.R. eds., 2017. Exploring positive relationships at work: Building a
theoretical and research foundation. Psychology Press.
Hatch, M.J., 2018. Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives.
Oxford university press.
Jiang, K., Lepak, D.P., Hu, J. and Baer, J.C., 2012. How does human resource management
influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating
mechanisms. Academy of management Journal, 55(6), pp.1264-1294.
Kumar, V., 2012. 101 design methods: A structured approach for driving innovation in your
organization. John Wiley & Sons.
Rummler, G.A. and Brache, A.P., 2012. Improving performance: How to manage the white
space on the organization chart. John Wiley & Sons.