Another crisis management

So is it the end of General Motors or only the end of the 2004 manufactured Chevrolet Cobalt car that was responsible for taking the lives of so many innocent General Motors customers. Everything seemed faulty in this car model. There were power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jammed and shut in the rain, ignition defect and much more. The worst to this crisis is that even after knowing about the defects, General Motors did nothing to fix the problems on the grounds that it was too expensive to recall all cars and rectify the problem.

It's one thing when you didn't know of the major problem and hence didn't do anything to rectify it. General Motors knew about the car defects way back in 2001. The problems were again highlighted in 2004, but nothing was done by the GM management to rectify the situation. Thirteen people have died in accidents as a result of faulty ignition and about 140 died in accidents involving the Cobalt in which the cause is unknown (Nocera, J. 2014).

Surely this is a big crisis and from the public relations point-of-view. The General Motors management is doing everything it can do to protect its public image. The company has hired a crisis management advisor Jeff Eller to help it come out of this crisis situation. Now Eller is the same man who had represented the Clinton administration. But will the public pardon such lethal mistakes? Even if G.M. has the best person roped in to reverse the damage, can the damage really be reduced? (Vlasic, B. 2014).

At the center of this crisis is General Motors CEO Mary Barra. In a letter to employees, Barra assures employees that the company's reputation won't be affected by the ongoing recall of 1.6 million vehicles with potentially fatal ignition problems, but rather on how it addresses the problem. Only time will tell whether GM will be able to keep its reputation like it was before or whether it is all over for this huge company. However reputation experts say that the first rules of reputation management is to be proactive and not reactive. And that GM should have acted way back in 2001 when the first faulty complaint was brought to its notice (McCarthy, M. 2014).

 

Reference List

McCarthy, M. (2014). How GM Can Steer Through Crisis of Ignition-Switch Recall. Ad Age. Retrieved from website link

Nocera, J. (2014). G.M.’s Cobalt Crisis. New York Times. Retrieved from website link

Vlasic, B. (2014). G.M. Turns to Experienced Crisis Experts. New York Times. Retrieved from website link