Businesses In The Middle East Should Invest in Crisis Communication
In the past decade, the MENA region has experienced various wars, political and religious polarization, regional immigration in many Arab countries that secured their independence barely a half a century ago. Even though there has been a lot of academic literature on these wars and political conflicts, academic crisis communication research conducted by institutions or scholars in the region is scarce. Multinational businesses and multilateral NGOs in the Arab World hire private security consultants and risk management companies to assist them with the crisis response planning. Yet, this kind of expertise rarely trickles to local businesses and organizations, there is still a shortage of crisis communication resources in Arabic.
Lack of Academic Literature
In the Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research, one of the few resources that contains research on crisis communications in the MENA region, Ibrahim Saleh criticizes the western approach to crisis communication in the region. “The western orientalist’s vision tends to be dominating the crisis communication field and journalistic reporting, promoting only geopolitical representations, and stereotyping of cultures and people.” He suggests that the absence of local knowledge and sweeping generalizations make some of the external crises and internal conflicts in the region worse.
The problem also lies in the large number of scholarly works published about MENA that lack first-hand insights, and have Eurocentric perspectives instead of local perspectives and domestic views of events. Overall, Saleh stresses the need for developing applying local theoretical approaches and consider very carefully the context and indigenous knowledge to make sense of what seems to be senseless and endless instead of thinking traditionally through the Eurocentric logic of Western crisis communication research. There are two main takeaways from this research, (1) there is a lack of crisis communication research in the MENA region; (2) there is a need to take the local cultural context into consideration.
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Increasing Interest in Crisis Communication
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered interest in crisis communications in the MENA region. In March 2020 Edelman Middle East CEO Omar Qirem published an article titled “communicating effectively during a global emergency” in which he writes that preparation for crisis communication has never been more vital. In an interview with Arab News, Alex Marouf ,Communications director at Schneider Electric MEA said that The Middle East’s communications industry does not have many specialized roles, but there are more internal communications roles being created.
PwC’s Global Crisis Survey (2019) is one of the better sources of data when it comes to crisis response both globally and in the MENA region. PwC surveyed 2000 companies around the world and reported that 69% of have experienced a crisis within the last 5 years. The types of crises experienced varied considerably by region, with technological and operational disruption most common in Western Europe, cybercrime in the US, and Geopolitical disruption in the Middle East. The report also notes that companies that invest in crisis response planning emerge stronger and create competitive advantage in the wake of a crisis. Another important finding is that cultural experiences are converging, and you should be aware of them no matter what regions you operate in. The PwC data is useful, but it still lacks country specific data. However, even though cultural experiences are converging, crisis communication is still challenging in the MENA region because each country has its own cultural complexities and operational challenges, yet at the same time all these countries are interconnected at different levels. A political crisis in Palestine/Israel for example, could reverberate to Jordan and other countries in the region.
Key takeaways
The COVID-19 pandemic started an important public conversation about the importance of communication in navigating a crisis. Yet, there is a lack of primary research on crisis communication conducted in the MENA region, thus it is hard to extrapolate how many businesses and organizations are interested in investing in crisis communication plans.
My recommendation for businesses and organizations in the region is to connect communication professionals, develop crisis communication resources in Arabic and frame them in a way that resonate with local audiences. Lastly, collect primary data on awareness of crisis communication, and map the need for communication resources by country and industry.
