Crisis Management Gone Wrong

A look at the Exxon Valdez oil spill crisis. The Exxon Valdez oil spill is one of the most highly scrutinized crisis management cases. Over 1,000,000 barrels of oil spilled into the water when an oil tanker went aground entering the Prince William Sound.

Proper crisis management highlights a few key steps to follow, of which Exxon did a poor part of demonstrating in its crisis response.

1. Timeliness of response:
Exxon CEO waited 6 days before he spoke at all to the media about the oil spill. Our Text, outlines the its best for the company to respond on the issue within 36 hours of its exposure.

2. Don't Constantly Deny Media

Exxon continued to deny the media's request to answer questions. This does nothing but give reason for the media to be creative and publish its own assumptions as to the questions they are trying to figure out, which most probably is not accurate.

3. Keep Information Accurate

Exxon didn't efficiently verify the information to be revealed to the media. This caused Exxon to have released contradictory information, creating an image of foolishness and led many to doubt what information was actually true and correct.

Be sure to respond quickly, have uniform information, and work collaboratively with the media to ensure less gossip stories that create and circulate rumors.

Strategic Planning and Assessing Crisis Vulnerability

Our senior seminar class text, Crisis Management in the New Strategy Landscape, by William "Rick" Crandall, John A. Parnell and John E. Spillan, clearly identifies that a business should properly evaluate their organization based on their company practices. The book identifies five steps:

1. External Analysis
2. Internal Analysis
3. Strategy Formation
4. Strategy Execution
5. Strategic Control

In short, the five steps suggest that the organization assess any opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and threats they face in their organization macro-environment as well as their internal environment. From there the organization must take these and match the internal with the external. From there, put a strategy into practice and properly adjust this when necessary.

Often this type of strategic process is referred to as a SWOT analysis. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

With keeping brevity in mind, I want to take a look into how crises play an affect on the MLB and its own SWOT analysis. Crises can be a weakness and a threat. For instance, 20 years ago, there threat of the public viewing performance enhancing drugs as bad and a weakness of the MLB not having any rules against them. However today, the situation with performance enhancing drugs could be considered both. As a weakness, its internal players are the ones actually using the drugs. However, as a threat is the media and their coverage of the scandal as well as information leaking to media outlets that aren't necessarily needing to know.

Do YOU think that 20 years ago the MLB thought that steroids factored into their SWOT analysis at all?

Literature in Baseball Crisis

When searching for articles and literature on crises involving Major League Baseball, I came across this particular book, Baseball In Crisis: Spiraling Costs, Bad Behavior, Uncertain Future written by Baseball In Crisis: Spiraling Costs, Bad Behavior, Uncertain Future in 2008. Below is a description of the book provided by Amazon:

"Recent polls have placed football ahead of baseball in popularity. Does this reflect football's rise or baseball's decline? Why has the national pastime--a title perhaps becoming inaccurate--fallen behind other major sports? Is the trend reversible?

This book identifies the most substantial and persistent issues that have impaired Major League Baseball's development. Chapters cover inflationary player, team and game costs; changes in baseball's fan base; congestion in urban areas that host big league ballclubs; the negligent and irrational actions (some of it criminal) of players, owners, league officials, and the players' union; and the maldistribution of power among the major league franchises. Six major reforms needed to boost the popularity of baseball are identified."


Baseball and football are much different sports. Football is full contact and baseball is more of a skill based sport. However, football has exceled in recent past and the 2010 Super Bowl was the most watched television program in the history of television. Football is played once a week, and fans can easily consider themselves "fanatics" because they only need to watch 3 hours a week. However, baseball is much more intense as they play at least 162 games at about 3 hours a game. Which may set up baseball fans to more likely overcome a baseball crisis. They have invested so much of their time into the sport and MLB that I would believe to think that they are more likely to remain with MLB.

Past Crises of the MLB

Major League Baseball is often categorized into time periods. Looking at the current time period, we will be focusing on the past two decades when looking at past crises that the MLB has dealt with and, that I would say, has overcome.

The 1994-1995 MLB Strike. I will briefly hit the main points of the strike and also delve into the ramifications the strike had on the league. The strike began on August 12, 1994 and ended on April 2, 1995, totaling 232 days. At least 931 were canceled including the 1994 postseason and World Series.

The issue at stake? Money.


The owners wanted to come up with some type of system that would allow more equal revenue sharing by creating a salary cap. This salary cap would essentially not allow the players to make as much money as they potentially could. The Major League Baseball Players Association stood firm on their demands. And would not agree to any contract offer that included a salary cap, which led to their 232 day strike.

The two sides agreed to terms and began the to-be-shortened 1995 season. Some players who tried to become replacement players are still not allowed in the MLBPA. However, fans showed their discontent with the actions of the two sides:

"On Opening Day in 1995, three men, who were each wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the word "Greed," leaped onto the field at Shea Stadium and tossed more than $150 in $1 bills at players.[5] In Cincinnati, one fan paid for a plane to fly over Riverfront Stadium that dragged a sign reading "Owners & Players: To hell with all of you!"[5] The meager crowds at the openers often booed at the players for their rusty fundamentals, shoddy defense, and in response to frequent high-scoring contests. Fans in Pittsburgh disrupted Opening Day by throwing sticks on the field, and holding up the action for 17 minutes before being warned that there would be a forfeit of the game between the Montreal Expos and Pittsburgh Pirates.[5] However, they continued to boo afterwards"

Attendance numbers dropped, fans were upset, others lost touch with the game that was missing for almost a full calendar year. But the MLB has lived on and is continuing to prosper even with the highest payrolls in its history.