John Oliver. Corporate Trauma: The Toxic Legacy of a Crisis. Published by De Gruyter, Berlin, 2025, 160 pp., ISBN: 978-3-11-157083-9

Abstract

Every company is either in crisis, about to be in crisis, or recovering from one. This insight by Harold Burson, the pioneer of modern public relations and founder of Burson, has long shaped both corporate communication practice and scholarship, framing crisis not as an anomaly, but as a structural condition of organizational life. While this perspective has underpinned a vast body of research on preparedness and response, it has also narrowed analytical focus to the acute moment of disruption. In an environment of sustained volatility—marked by geopolitical tensions, fragile supply chains and energy uncertainty—such temporal myopia is increasingly insufficient. In Corporate Trauma: The Toxic Legacy of a Crisis, John Oliver shifts the analytical lens toward the aftermath, examining the longer-term organizational consequences that crises leave behind.