ISSUE LIFE CYCLE MODEL

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Gerde and White (2003) analyzed Post, Lawrence, and Weber’s (2002) Issue Life Cycle Model: “The first phase of the issue life cycle begins as a difference evolves between an organization’s behavior and stakeholders’ expectations… The second phase is the political action phase. In this stage, stakeholders raise awareness by communicating to the public and other stakeholder groups to campaign for support… The third phase solidifies the interpretation of the issue and allows for stakeholders to interact with each other in a more formal setting and perhaps come to a resolution… The fourth phase is the enforcement phase. This portion of the life cycle includes the actual implementation, compliance, and enforcement of the law or regulation” (pp. 88-90). The organization tries to adjust its behavior according to stakeholders’ expectations and issues manager finds gaps between the organization’s behavior and stakeholders’ expectations as soon as possible, the first phase is most important to fix issues when they have not yet become serious and to prevent them transfer to the second phase, issues manager should close gaps in the first phase. He/she should not wait for issues to switch to the second phase because issues will become more serious in the second phase. In the second phase, the organization’s staff should raise awareness, and the level of employee awareness should be faster and deeper than the level of stakeholders’ awareness. In the third phase, the issues manager assesses proposed laws, regulations, or policies that create better or worse effects to resolve issues. In the fourth phase, the issues manager monitors his/her organization’s proposed law, regulation, or policy compliance; based on the new law, regulation, or policy to support the firm’s performance to close the gap in stakeholders’ performance expectations to resolve issues to follow the firm’s position.

Veng (2008) proposed, “An issue (normally) begins very slowly in its early stages (Potential and emergent issues), then the issue takes form and develops into the current stage, typically in terms of extensive public focus and awareness, and finally, the issue peaks in its maturity (e.g. in the form of a crisis), and after that it dies in terms of lack of public focus and awareness (Dormant stage) (p. 18). Post, Lawrence, and Weber’s (2002) Issue Life Cycle Model indicates the level of stakeholder concerns of awareness which will gradually increase from phase I of changing stakeholder’s expectations to phase IV of implementation and compliance, and then it will gradually decrease. Veng’s (2008) Issue Life Cycle Model indicates the pressure, which will gradually increase from stage 1 of the potential issue to the end of stage 3 of the current issue & crisis and the start of stage 4 of the dormant issue. However, issues in Veng’s (2008) Issue Life Cycle Model’s stage 3 of current issue & crisis, but not all issues cause the crisis, so the crisis should be described in another issue cycle related to crisis management.