Storm King Mountain

This case study defiantly shows another side of the problems organizations are faced with. While reading other cases over the semester we have looked at many different types of tribulations companies and organizations have had to deal with, but I believe that this one has some varying consequences for the events that took place. After reading what had happened to the firefighters at Storm King Mountain I was troubled by the events that happened after their deaths. The fact is that these men were firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect the conservation of forests and also the protection of those who could have been in danger. While during the mourning of their deaths their families had to endure speculation that it was their fault they were killed is in my mind very wrong. The first two questions that the book asks us to consider. One being why do I think the public demands an investigation and to assert blame quickly and is it an American culture ordeal. The second question asks do I think that organizations should perform their own investigations. Both of these questions to me have direct relation to this case and further more are important questions to address to better captivate the ethical judgments made by the people involved whether reporters, the firefighters and their families, and the organizations involved. For the first question I think that the most important reason why the public wants a statement a quickly is possible is closure and understanding. When events or actions take along time to resolve people start to mistrust the situation and develop hostility towards those not giving information. What I mean by this is that people want to know what to know everything so that they can make conclusions and resolve unsettling happenings much like ones that involve the death and tragedy of the firefighters. The same type of situation occurred during 9/11 when people didn’t know what was going on they want information as quickly as possible to draw conclusions from. Another thing to mention is that when people make statements, like the analysts, it is to address the situation of exigency. This is a term I learned in my Communication 301 class on rhetorical communication. As I was reading about the timeliness of address the firefighter’s misfortune and how to them it wan more important to make a quick statement then to actually uncover the entire truth about the event made me think about exigency of communication. Just like when President Bush addressed the nation the night of 9/11 he didn’t know all the information, but need to calm and address the American public about the attack earlier that morning. The second question to address is that organizations I believe shouldn’t make their own investigations about internal problems. The case study makes it very clear that when an organization makes an analysis of their own situations that objectivity, accountability other judgments come into affect making clear assessments and reports. Much like the indignity of Enron while they tried to cover up mishaps and disasters they don’t want to report the truth and will have a bias of reporting information that won’t hurt the organization. This is what I would think most internal investigations would have trouble with. This is because you can’t be objective while trying to protect your own organization. The ordeal with Storm King Mountain is that they wanted to investigate the death or the firefighters so they can assess changes and make conclusions on what went wrong. This is a good for the organization because it leaves them in control. As for actually making a complete and factual investigation for the families and further development of safety procedures for future firefighting incidents there might be some holes. I think that it would be near impossible to make a full objective report while you are one of the stakeholders in the organization. Your bias to the success and future standing of the company and also you don’t want to take the fall. This leads into the next point of accountability. We have talked immensely of how accountability can affect an organization. This case certainly had some lapses while investigating for accountability for the episode on Storm King Mountain. The internal investigation provided information to the reporters that placed the blame of the death of 14 firefighters on the firefighters themselves. My conclusion of this is that it’s it easy to blame the dead because they’re dead. Isn’t that better then assessing blame on those still around to refute accusations? While assessing accountability from internal investigations, while being bias, the truth can escape you. Much like we talked about the Enron case it asks the question where does accountability rest when many are to blame including yourself and plus the fact that they are you friends and coworkers. For the people in this organization sitting in the offices with air conditioning, as the case study describes, weren’t about to take responsibility for the event. As stakeholders and protecting the organization internal investigations can be useful when the truth isn’t what they want to hear. The reason why I placed these two questions together is because I feel that they tie into one another. These two questions address the timeliness of the investigation being made and the fact that it was an internal investigation made. This made for some very serious lapses of moral judgments from the organization. The part in the book about moral judgments got the most attention from me because I do think that above all that happened to the firefighters at Storm King Mountain was the real tragedy and their deaths shouldn’t have been made an escape route for the organization. To report that their “can-do attitudes” got them killed is a disgrace to there memory and further causes pain to those that knew and lost them, such as there families. While making an investigation can help answer questions many new ones can arise at the same time. It is important to address the public and make an exigency statement to ensure that closure of the incident will be made, but not in the way that the internal investigations conducted to protect themselves over the memories of those who were lost.