[2] Coombs created his experimentally based SCCT to give communicators scientific evidence to guide their decisions, essentially stating that the actions an organization takes post-crisis depend on the crisis situation.
SCCT provides crisis managers with an evidence-based guide to assessing and responding to crises, allowing them to make informed, strategic, and beneficial decisions.
Coombs draws on William Benoit's Image Restoration Theory in his conceptualization of responsibility and reputational threat, stating that perception is fundamental to assessments of both components.
In fact, Coombs’ own prior research showed that crisis responsibility and organizational reputation are negatively related.
Within this context, how well an organization has treated its stakeholders in the past—its prior relational reputation—also plays a part in assessing reputational threat.
[citation needed] Because of crisis responsibility and reputational threat, crises can effect changes in emotions, and as a result, behaviors.
SCCT's list for responding to crises assumes that the organization has accepted some level of responsibility for the crisis.
Coombs found that the primary responses to crises in SCCT form three groups: deny, diminish, and rebuild.
[3] This strategy can bolster goodwill and arouse feelings of sympathy toward the organization, but Coombs warns, should be used to supplement the primary responses, not as replacements.
While these two industries operate differently, both still need their crisis situations properly addressed and in a timely manner.
Nonprofits depend on their publics and are often held on a higher pedestal than the average for-profit organization and are always being shaped by the wants and needs of their external environments.
Research done by Hilary Fussell Sisco in 2012 found that participants favor nonprofits more positively that utilize a response strategy from Coombs.