All Social Risk Events Follow Patterns

A manager’s actions contradict corporate values. The actions go viral. The firm is under pressure to respond quickly and effectively.

Company actions can erupt into social risk crises that reveal exposures related to inclusion, #MeToo, product safety, income inequality and many others. Each of these exposures represents a separate social risk with unique characteristics. But they all require companies to exercise sensitivity and responsiveness to the opinions of employees, customers and many diverse stakeholders.

The firm recognizes the high costs of mishandling the situation. Instead of betting the future on a course of action based on subjective opinions and “gut instinct”, their approach is to study past events as precedents, seeking to learn what has actually worked in similar situations.

MSA’s research demonstrates that there are underlying logical similarities between all social risk events. These similarities create opportunities to define and use data:

1.     MSA creates a database of social risk events with categories (fields) that capture each event's structure.

2.     MSA uses the database to identify events from the past that are logically related to a current social risk crisis.

3.     MSA and the client study the identified events for lessons to support crisis management and planning.

The company uses curated sets of past events to develop objective best practices for the situation at hand. Because they have hard evidence of what has worked in similar situations, they act confidently and decisively.