Crisis Management Study Based On Corporate Life Cycles

For the past few years, both domestic and transnational enterprises suffered from crises frequently in China. Therefore, enterprise crisis management has become a hot topic in management fields. The research materials of enterprise crisis management both at home and abroad were quite plentiful, but the practice didn't come up to expectations. Every enterprise has life cycle, and the crises types of different stages may vary with the change of interior and exterior surroundings. Consequently we should suit specific remedies to different cases.This paper chooses a new angle of view, trying to study the enterprise crisis management based on corporate life cycles.This paper concludes seven parts. First of all, it gives an overview of the theories of corporate life cycles and crisis management. Secondly, this paper takes"the annual'Cases of Enterprise Crises and Public Relations'from 2003 to 2008"as sample and analyses from many dimensions, such as crises'sources, types, industrial distribution, corporate life cycles distribution and results, etc., then discusses the crises mechanisms and relevant strategies of crisis management from different stages, takes the"Big Blue"--IBM corporate as an empirical analysis case. Research indicates that the crisis frequency of growing stage is higher than others, especially in the industry of IT, Food & Beverage, petrochemical & plastics. Therefore, these industrials'enterprises in growing stage should keep an eye on it and avoid sliding into crises. From my point of view, crisis is an inescapable certainty for enterprises, which as a member of social groups, but which kind of enterprises and stages will come to crises are probability cases. Thus every enterprise should make every effort to avoid sliding into crises. But once they are suffered from crises, they should response swiftly, communicate actively, seek truth information and make effective use of them, eventually change crises into opportunities by the most expeditious and valid means.