Corporate Issues Management

Corporate issues management (including both firms and nongovernmental organizations) is the internal process by which organizations assess potential and future threats and opportunities from unfolding events, situations, and interactions that arise from organizational actions, past history, or external events. Issues that arise externally can be a result of pressures from the general public, changing societal mores and values, stakeholders, judicial decisions, and proposed legislative and regulatory actions. Often, these issues are driven by ethical failures in corporate management and/or behavior. Consider, for example, the financial scandals engendered by Enron Corporation’s leadership ethical lapses or BP’s actions before, during, and after the explosions on their oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

Issues management tends to be the long-range planning tool for organizations to equip them to ...