Today we live in an interconnected world. Through globalization and the development of information technology one can say that, today everyone is our neighbour. The result of our actions can easily spread and affect people on the other side of the world within seconds.
Meanwhile, Third World countries are developing into stable economies and Western European corporations are expanding like never before and setting up their organizations in these new markets.
This of course is not unproblematic, it creates new challenges for international organizations especially when it comes to communication. An example of that same problematic communication presented itself for Arla Foods in what came to be called the Cartoon Crisis.
In late September of 2005 a number of cartoons depicting the holy prophet Muhammed were published in a Danish newspaper. This event sparked scores of protest ranging from Morocco to the Philippines. It unfolded into a full-scale diplomatic crisis and boycott of Danish products in which the very foundations of western democracy clashed with religious Islamic beliefs.
This thesis uses Arla Foods in the crisis concerning the Muhammed cartoons as an example and tries to explain the many changes in crisis management and ? communication in the late modern global world.
Many of the actions taken by Arla Foods in their attempts to stop the boycott were influenced by typical traditional crisis communication. This thesis uses a social constructivistic perspective while discussing crisis management and standing on the shoulders of chaos-theory we discuss oganisational crises in a late modern world.
We mean that an organization in order to survive needs to broaden its perspective when it comes to stakeholder relations, the impact of culture and religion and the way they use their communication. Organisations must also accept that they cannot control their surroundings. Based on dialog and understanding the organization must accept the costs of proa...
