Between approximately September 1, 2012 and February 1, 2014, the popular Canadian fashion retailer Lululemon Athletica Inc. faced an organizational crisis due to quality management problems. Beginning with manufacturing complications, the quality issues expressed themselves through various crisis symptoms (e.g., financial issues, legal issues, and senior leadership turmoil). The organization enacted crisis communication strategies to mitigate reputational risk and to inform the public and its stakeholders about the crisis. The news media also reported on the crisis extensively, which contributed to the public and stakeholders’ perceptions of the company and crisis. This dissertation draws on theories of narrative, translation, communication and media, and crisis communication to develop a theoretical foundation to guide the goals of this study. It is based on theories that conceptualize textual journalism as a process of both intralingual and interdiscursive translation that results in new narratives for the purpose of news media content creation. A qualitative content analysis informed by principles of critical discourse analysis is conducted to examine the narration of the crisis as depicted in the company’s textual communication about the crisis (e.g., press releases, annual reports), and the depiction of the crisis as narrated in textual media reports about the organization’s crisis. The two information streams are first analyzed individually to extract the main themes and sub-themes presented. Based on these analyses, a comparison of the two different information streams and their respective crisis narratives is conducted. The project investigates the ways in which the media translated information about the crisis to create their own narratives of the crisis. The findings of this dissertation show the process through which translation occurs, namely the linguistic and discursive variance between these two information streams. An analysis of the patterns in the linguistic and discursive variance between these two information streams indicates how the different social contexts in which each information stream is embedded may have impacted how the translation/journalism process occurs.

Syfte - Trots att kriser sägs vara vardagliga händelser saknas en tydlig definition avkrisbegreppet och kategorisering av de olika kristyper. Vi har identifierat två dimensioner,den externa och interna. Den externa dimensionen med fokus på hårda kriser har domineratområdet krisforskning. Således är hantering av interna och mjuka kriser ett outforskatområde. Syftet med denna studie är att bidra till förståelsen för hur svenska myndigheterarbetar med hanteringen av mjuka kriser.Metod - Denna studie tar sin grund i en kvalitativ metodansats där datainsamlingengenomfördes genom fem semistrukturerade intervjuer.Resultat - Fenomenet mjuka kriser är svårt att undersöka då detta är svårt att definiera ochfaller inom HR´s ansvarsområdet. Den traditionella krisforskningen med fokus på hårdakriser saknar kunskap kring hantering av interna mjuka kriser. Trots det visar resultaten attprecis som med hårda kriser, kan mjuka kriser studeras utifrån samtliga krisfaser. Merforskning kring fenomenet är således önskvärd.Bidrag - Denna studie skapar ett större förståelse kring definitionen av mjuka kriser samtskapar medvetenhet kring olika mjuka aspekter som skiljer sig från de externa /fysiska / hårdakriserna. Studien belyser problematiken kring olika aspekter inom mjuk krishantering ochsåledes är problematiseringen av mjuka kriser ett bidrag. Denna studie är även användbar förorganisationer som har ambitionen att inkludera hantering av mjuka kriser i sin krishantering. / Purpose - Although crises are said to be everyday events, there is no clear definition of theconcept of crisis and categorization of different types of crisis. We have identified twodimensions, the external and the internal. The external dimension with a focus on hard-corecrises has dominated the area of crisis research. Thus, dealing with internal and soft-corecrises is an unexplored area. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding ofhow Swedish authorities work with the management of soft crises.Methodology - This study is based on a qualitative method approach where data collectionwas carried out through five semi-structured interviews.Results - The phenomenon of soft crises is difficult to investigate as the concept is fairly newand difficult to define, and falls within the responsibility of HR instead of crisis management.Traditional crisis research with a focus on hard-core crises lacks knowledge about handlinginternal soft crises. Nevertheless, the results show that just as with hard-core crises, soft-corecrises can be studied based on all crisis phases. More research on the phenomenon is thusdesirable.Contribution - This study contributes to the understanding of the definition of soft-corecrises and creates awareness of different soft aspects that differ from the external / physical /hard crises. The study sheds light on the problems surrounding various aspects of soft-corecrisis management and thus is the problematization of soft-core crises a contribution. Thisstudy is also useful for organizations that have the ambition to include the management ofsoft-core crises in their crisis management.