Crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) model was introduced by B. Reynolds and M. Seeger in 2005 and since that has played a crucial role in crisis communications management. CERC deals with both risk and crisis communications, distinguishing between the two.

It is crucial to point the differences between risk and crisis communications, as well as to highlight their common parts. In case of risk communication, no particular harm has yet appeared, thus the stakeholders are to be informed on the possible risks, prevention measures, projections, and their technical understanding and cultural beliefs are to be addressed. In terms of risk communication, a crisis has already emerged and the stakeholders are to be informed on the current state of affairs and the measures taken to ensure the soonest resolution possible (Seeger, 2005).

Yet there are certain commonalities between risk and crisis communications. Both use the same communication channels (e.g. mass media, company websites, social media, alerts, etc.), and, what is more important, both strive to achieve the common goal of reducing public harm to the minimum and ensuring positive outcomes of the situation given (Lang & Lundgren, 1994).

In terms of communication, the CERC model builds on SCCT and expands its understanding of valuing public safety insurance over reputation. The CERC model posits that, while communicating to the public (or stakeholders in terms of this research), it is important to bear in mind that the most effective messages are connected to the receivers' needs and expectations. Moreover, the public would tend to simplify messages, thus, clear, credible, and expectations-bound crisis communication would be the most effective in terms of achieving the communicative goal.

CERC focuses on both risk and crisis communication and, in its essence, tracks the transformation of risk into a crisis, while also analyzing the surrounding factors. CERC distinguishes five stages of risk and crisis communications which are as follows:

1) Pre-crisis (risk messages, warning, preparations). Here we talk about risk communications described above with all the measures taken to prevent the crisis and to inform the stakeholders of possible feature risks.

2) Initial Event (uncertainty reduction, self-efficacy, reassurance). At this stage, fast actions are needed in order to communicate the current situation and establish empathic relations with the public.

3) Maintenance (ongoing uncertainty reduction, self-efficacy, reassurance). Gather feedback, keep informing the stakeholders on all the shifts in the crisis, seek support groups.

4) Resolution (Updates Regarding Resolution; Discussions about Cause and New Risks/New Understandings of Risk). This stage is dedicated to public discussion and resolution updates.

5) Evaluation (Discussions of Adequacy of Response; Consensus About Lessons and New Understandings of Risks). Stage of evaluation of crisis communication and organizational behavior, the establishment of connections with the public (Seeger, 2005).

CERC model will be further used in this research to analyze a case of crisis communications with tracking the crisis from the risk (pre-crisis) stage to the resolution and further evaluation. CSR practices of a pharmaceutical company will be analyzed in order to track their interconnection with the outcomes of crisis communications.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility

2.1 Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Reputation

Before moving on to defining corporate social responsibility it is crucial to understand the general importance of socially responsible organizational behavior among the stakeholders of various organizations. The research shows that consumers nowadays are more and more concerned with the ethical part of an organization's behavior. 87% of American consumers report choosing a brand associated with ethical behavior. Likewise, 85% of consumers consider switching from one brand to another if the second one appears to be more socially responsible. 66% of the respondents have reported boycotting the brand if associated with unethical behavior (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010). Reputation is crucial for an organization to maintain its customers and conduct productive communications, while customers tend to care more and more about an organization's stance on social responsibility.

There are many ways to define Corporate Social Responsibility, and researchers have not yet agreed upon a unified one. This abundance of definitions may cause certain misunderstandings of the concept and confusion in analyzing literature exploring peculiarities of contemporary CSR peculiarities (Dahlsrud, 2008). In order to avoid those misunderstandings, we choose the following definition of Corporate Social Responsibility being an ethical concept underlying the obligation of an organization to develop communities and improve ecology (Klement, 2008).

The research on the topic has shown that CSR activities of an organization could lead to both increased customers' loyalty and reputational damage depending on whether CSR practices have been communicated successfully to the customers. Brand loyalty raises when an organization's CSR activities are perceived positively. However, if the customers find CSR activities to serve purely advertising purposes further reputational crises may occur (Yoon, Gьrhan-Canli & Schwarz, 2006).

Yet despite the growing public concern of CSR organizational practices and CSR's possibilities for building strong brand-stakeholder ties, the research shows that the public still believes that organizations do not listen to their needs and concerns (Dawkins, 2004). The credibility of organizational CSR (which can refer to the perceived sincerity of an organization described above) still raises many questions and public cynicism prevents some organizations from acquiring many benefits of socially favorable organizations.

The research of J. Dawkins called "Corporate Responsibility: The Communication Challenge" also tackles the issue of different stakeholders having different expectations towards what specific CSR activities an organization is to indulge in. Similarly to the research on crisis communications, research on CSR communications also provides ample evidence on the need to adapt communicative strategy depending on the stakeholders' needs and expectations. J. Dawkins also posits, that what stakeholders believe an organizational CSR stance has a real influence on the trust of the organization, and not the real stance is.

All in all, according to Dawkins, the most productive CSR communications are always stakeholders driven and concentrate around specific stakeholder groups' need and expectations. A clear communicative strategy should be revolving around forming a strong positive image of a socially responsible organization.

2.2 Corporate Social Responsibility and its Perceived Sincerity

3. SPEAKING Grid by Dell Hymes

As a part of the current research, we will implement the Speaking grid - the model of communication developed by Dell Hymes to analyze CSR and crisis communications of a pharmaceutical organization Pfizer. Thus, before we continue with the analysis, we should again summarize the main notions of the Speaking Grid and explain the way the given model will be implemented.

Speaking Grid was introduced by a professor of Anthropology Dell Hymes (Hymes, 1972). Speaking is a mnemonic code used to represent the following components of a communicative event: settings, participants, ends, act sequence, key, instrumentalities, norms, and genre. It is important to note, however, that the Speaking abbreviation serves the purely mnemonic purposes and can be implemented for various types of communication and not speaking exclusively. The idea behind the paradigm is that there are various cultural and other background factors that are to be taken into consideration in order to build a successful line of communication.

An organization's success or failure of communications may be explained via the implementation of the Speaking grid in the analysis of the given communicative event. While an organization might be sincerely striving to show social responsibility it may as well act out of norms or appropriate genre for a given language community, which will lead to the message distortion and further reputational threat. We will conduct an analysis of organizational communications based on the Speaking grid in order to understand the correlation between the intentions and the outcomes of those communicative events.

We will now move on to examining the elements of the Speaking and how we are to implement those elements into our case-study analysis.

Setting and Scene: these elements refer to the literal physical surrounding around the communicative event as well as the rules and expectations of certain communications acts. As a part of our research, we will look at the communication codes and expected code-switching in CSR and crisis communications and their reference to the real settings of the communicative event.

Participants: participants are those who are directly involved in the communicative event. There is the speaker (an organization) and the audience (the customers) who take part in the communicative act. Specific rules and expectations of the participants are to be taken into consideration while analyzing a speech event.

Ends: the ends of the communicative event are the communicative purposes of the participant and their expected outcomes of the communication. In this element it is important to analyze various goals of different participants and whether any those were achieved, as it is also crucial to understand that those ends are rarely the same for various participants.

Act Sequence: this element tackles the issue of the sequence if speech act, their purpose, tone, and interconnection. Turn-tacking and interruption are the crucial parts of the given element of the grid. Such issues as a collaborative interruption, appraisal, suddenly emerged argument, etc. might occur during a communicative event.

Key: key establishes the tone, manner, or spirit of the communicative event. Formal or informal keys refer to the tone of communication and adds the "human" element to communication.

Instrumentalities: the instrumentalities element of the SPEAKING grid refers to the channel of communication, register, and the method of communication. Generally, these elements refer to the style and form of speech. A different participant can use different instrumentalities (e.g. one uses formal register, whereas the other is stick to highly informal language). Thus, the conversation would look awkward and unnatural if the instrumentalities implemented by the participants do not correspond to each other.

Norms: norms are the rules used to control the communicative event. Norms would vary from one language community to another and depend on many other factors such as the setting and the act sequence.

Genre: the specific genre of communicative events moderate the course of the whole communications. Examples of a genre can be conversations, jokes, articles, etc.

If a misunderstanding or disconnection between the parties involved in the communication process appears, the so-called Rich Points come into play. They are referred to as MAR (Mistake, Awareness, Repair) (Hymes, 1974). Those rich points will be of great importance for our research as it is centered around crisis communications following a certain conflict.

Mistake: mistakes in communication arise when the participants have conflicting views and expectations towards the elements of the Speaking grid. They might have different ends, accept different norms, or expect another act sequence. All those mismatches lead to communicative mistakes and further conflicts.

Awareness: awareness appears as one or more of the participants start to see the reasons behind communication and certain patterns of the Speaking grid and their implementation in the given context.

Repair: repair takes place as one or more of the participants change one of the Speaking grid elements to ameliorate their mistakes based on communicative awareness.

4. Case Study

4.1 Pfizer case

For the research part of this paper, we would analyze the case of an international organization involved in a huge scandal which was followed by a reputational crisis and further crisis communications. The organization in question claims to act out of social responsibility principles in any of its enterprises and its reputation relies heavily on CSR politics and communications(BBC, 2007).

We will conduct our case study analysis in the following manner: first of all, the case will be presented in more detail with attention to the CSR stance of the organization and the course of crisis communications. The main participants and stakeholders of the case will be presented as well. As the overall case is presented, we will further proceed to the case analysis based on the three communications theories, namely: SCCT, CERC, and the Speaking grid. Certain conclusions on the influence of CSR to crisis communications will be then drawn. In order to check the correctness of the conclusions to the case study analysis, a similar artificial case will be designed, as well as a set of specific questions aiming again at tracking the existing link between CSR and crisis communications outcome.

The case we have chosen for the analysis in this research is the case of a pharmaceutical company Pfizer. In 1996 an outbreak of meningitis has stroked the Nigerian region of Africa. The fatality rate was 20% in the first week of the disease (Trovan Fact Sheet). At the moment, Pfizer was working at the development of their new antibiotic with the brand name Trovan. The antibiotic was tested on animals and some of the US citizens, yet proper human-based experiments were to be started for Pfizer to be able to release the drug to the market. As their CSR campaign, Pfizer had been working closely with Nigeria and some other African countries for around fifty years by the moment of the crisis presented. Trovan was offered to the Nigerian children as an experimental medicine to help stop cure those with meningitis(Forbes, 2009). Pfizer claimed Trovan was the best solution there in the market with the proven effect of curing meningitis. Several Pfizer experts were sent to Nigerian hospitals with children struggling from meningitis to offer them their expertise as well as the newly developed antibiotic (Trovan, statement of defense, 2007).

However, almost ten years after the epidemy, in 2006, a lawsuit was filed against Pfizer by the children treated with Trovan, supported by the Nigerian government. People who went through the experimental treatment accused Pfizer of the experimenting unsafe drug on children, which led to adverse side effects such as hearing loss and multiple movement dysfunctions. It was claimed in the case that people were not properly informed on the experimental nature of the drug as well as their right to refuse an experimental treatment due to the language barrier. Pfizer was also accused of conducting an unsafe drug trial on the human being while even the animal testing stage had shown severe side effects of Trovan (BBC, 2011).

At the same time, Pfizer refused to accept any of the accusations, claiming they were acting out of the agreement with the Nigerian government, and the effectiveness and safety of Trovan had already been proven via various medical tests. One the Pfizer's official documents states: "Pfizer continues to emphasize--in the strongest terms - that the 1996 Trovan clinical study was conducted with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government and in a responsible and ethical way consistent with the company's abiding commitment to patient safety…It is indeed regrettable that more than a decade after the meningitis epidemic in Kano, the Nigerian government has taken legal action against Pfizer and others for an effort that provided significant benefit to some of Nigeria's youngest citizens." (Haskins, 2007). Those words highlight that the experiment, whether ethical or not, was aligned with the company's CSR practices, which, however, had caused doubt among the people of Nigeria and the Western media. The interconnection of the perceived sincerity of the given CSR practice and the outcomes of crisis communications conducted by Pfizer will be further analyzed in this research.

It took four years for Pfizer to resolve the conflict and ameliorate the crisis. They never accepted any fault for the aftereffects of the drug trial, nor had their fault been proven. Yet Pfizer took part in the lives of the children who went through Trovan treatment and paid a certain sum of money to their families as well as to the government of Nigeria(Pfizer.com, 2009). As the main message of their crisis communication Pfizer adjusted the idea that any of the adverse health conditions the drug takers had experienced was caused not by Trovan, but meningitis itself, as the disease is well known for the implications it caused for those who have ever suffered from it.

It must be taken into consideration that part of the contemporary CSR politics of Pfizer is to ensure all their customers understand possible side effects of the drugs they take as well the fact that the benefits for the health are greater than the side effects anyway, otherwise the drug would have never been released for the public(Pfizer.com).

All the data on the case have been taken from major Western media articles such as CNN (CNN, 2010), the Guardian(The Guardian, 2011),(The Guardian, 2010), Forbes(Forbes. 2009), BBC(BBC, 2011), (BBC, 2007), as well as Pfizer's official website(Pfizer.com), (Trovan Fact Sheet), (Trovan, Statement of Defense, 2007), (Pfizer.com, 2009), (Kaskins, 2007).

Before moving on to the research part of this paper let us again summaries the case for the analysis.

Pfizer's CSR standing in the case: It is Pfizer's highest priority to ensure safety all around the world and, due to the long productive work of Pfizer for the good of the Nigerian region, they took part in treating the epidemy of meningitis with their newly devised, highly effective antibiotic Trovan.

Crisis: Pfizer accused of tacking financially driven decisions in the harsh to experiment on humans so that they can release to the international market their new drug with various side effects.

Stakeholders: Nigerian children who went through the drug trial, the Nigerian government, Pfizer's customers.

The case was chosen due to the explicit CSR nature of the position taken by the organization in the given case, and, thus, a better opportunity to track the interconnection of trust/mistrust of the given CSR stance and the outcomes of crisis communications.

4.2 Situational Crisis Communication Theory Implementation

We will start the analysis of the case with the implementation of the SCCT theory presented by W. Coombs and colleges, which was explained in detail in the theoretical chapter of this paper(Coombs & Holladay, 2001, 2002).

First of all, to start the analysis we are to attribute the given crisis to one of the thirteen crisis types presented in SCCT as well as determine its cluster (victim cluster, accidental cluster, and intentional cluster). After doing this, we shall attribute the crisis response strategy to one of the eight presented in SCCT. For the purpose of the research, it is essential to keep paying attention to the CSR strategies presented in the case and track their role in crisis development and resolution.

The Pfizer case does not fall into the victim cluster as no external forces have ever damaged the organization in the case. The accidental cluster would have been appropriate if the stakeholders did not blame Pfizer for administering an unsafe drug to children, which was claimed to cause immense health damage. Thus, the intentional cluster is the one corresponding with the given crisis as the organization was blamed for the unsafe decision of the management and personnel during the epidemy (BBC, 2011).

This, by the SCCT classification, means that the crisis responsibility was strongly attributed to the organization and the reputation threat was severe. This crisis falls in the "organization misdeed with injures" category which is the thirteenth most severe crisis type in SCCT. It posits that the stakeholders were placed at risk and injured due to the managerial decisions of the given organization (Coombs, 1995).

An important note here would refer to the CSR role in the crisis type attribution as Pfizer were striving to justify their deeds by claiming acting responsibly and purely from the sincere desire to help the Nigerian children to whom they had attended before. As well as calling all of their actions in Nigeria a part of their global program of support for the local communities in need (Haskins, 2007). If the stakeholders were to believe in the initial sincerity and social nature of Pfizer's actions, the sixth crisis type of "technical-error accident" (accidental cluster) would have been attributed to the crisis. This crisis type implies that an accident (adverse consequences of the drug intake/disease) was caused by the factors not controlled by an organization and hardly could have been prevented as the organization was taking all the necessary precautions. This crisis type only moderately threatens the organizational reputation and the crisis responsibility attribution is minimal. Yet this was not the case for Pfizer since the stakeholders placed doubt on the social nature of the enterprise and believed Pfizer was well aware of the possible side effects of the drug (Washingtonpost, 2007). Though Pfizer was believed to value the possibility to release their drug to the market more than the safety of their stakeholders.

In the course of crisis communication, Pfizer indulged into such crisis communication strategies as victimization, justification, ingratiation, and corrective action. Only the last two fall into the high crisis responsibility attribution category of SCCT. Yet, full apology also laying in this part of high crisis responsibility attribution had never been given by Pfizer. This is due to the fact that a lawsuit was filed against Pfizer and acceptance of the crisis responsibly would have led to a severe legal consequence for Pfizer.