Every company -- large or small, publicly traded or privately held -- runs the risk of a crisis. Forward-thinking companies across the country and around the world are proactively practicing crisis management.

In a TIME magazine feature story on Lexicon Communications and its president, Steven Fink (author of the seminal book, Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable), the news magazine referred to crisis management as the new corporate discipline, and detailed how companies are quickly enlisting the aid of outside consultants to help establish crisis management plans.

Click on this link for a quick primer on the important differences between Crisis Management and Crisis Communications.

Read more about crisis management here.