Exploring the role of CSR fit and the length of CSR involvement in routine business and corporate crises settings

This 2 × 2 experimental study examines the influence of CSR fit and the length of CSR involvement on corporate reputation and CSR skepticism in a routine business setting and crisis responsibility in a victim crisis. The study demonstrates a significant interaction between the two variables on the construction of corporate reputation. The length of CSR involvement is also found to influence people’s attribution of crisis responsibility in a crisis. By comparing corporate reputation and CSR skepticism before and after a crisis, the study further articulates the destructive power of crises. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The interplay between post-crisis response strategy and pre-crisis corporate associations in the context of CSR crises

How should a company respond to a crisis that is related to its social responsibility by capitalizing on consumers’ existing corporate associations? To answer this question, the present study focuses on two primary types of corporate associations, corporate ability (CA) associations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations, and proposes two different types of response strategies that are association-based: CA strategy and CSR strategy. Drawing on the framework of CA-CSR, Expectancy Violation Theory, and information processing literature, this study examines whether and how these crisis response strategies interact with consumers’ pre-crisis associations and collectively influence consumer reactions in times of CSR crises. Results of two experiments render support for the predicted interaction effect. Furthermore, the results show that crisis response diagnosticity and novelty, as perceived by consumers with varied pre-crisis associations, serve as the underlying process explanations that drive the observed interaction effect. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of these results to crisis communication are also discussed.     

Effects of apologies and crisis responsibility on corporate and spokesperson reputation

This study is aimed at the effects of making apologies in a crisis situation and attributed crisis responsibility on corporate- and spokesperson reputation. In a 2 × 2 scenario experiment (spokesperson making apologies versus no apologies; and accidental versus preventable crisis), 84 respondents judged corporate and spokesperson reputation. We found that the crisis has more impact on corporate reputation than on the spokesperson's reputation. This indicates that the crisis is seen as a collective responsibility of the organization, rather than the personal responsibility of the spokesperson.     

Hybrid happening: Organizational reputations in corporate crises

Public relations professionals strive to develop mutually beneficial relationships among key publics that will result in favorable organizational reputations, but crises typically threaten those reputations. Much of public relations crisis research focuses on how to respond after a crisis, but drawing on Expectation Violation Theory (EVT), this research focuses on the expectations of stakeholders before a crisis and how they process information during a crisis. Drawing from reputation management research in marketing, it conceptualizes corporate reputations as encompassing associations related to corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Reputation management research generally has investigated reputations as strong on either CA or CSR, but this research examines the effects of a “hybrid” reputation, which is strong in terms of both CA and CSR associations. The results of an experiment reveal that stakeholders’ responses during a crisis vary based on their expectations, how they perceive a hybrid reputation, and the crisis type. The study has theoretical implications regarding stakeholders’ information processing during a crisis, and it provides public relations professionals insights regarding how to cultivate and protect an organizational reputation.     

Understanding Reputational Crisis: Definition,Properties, and Consequences

To better understand the nature of reputational crisis, this study examined two crisis events using the corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis categorization frameworks. This scenario-based experimental study validates the usefulness of the CA–CSR crisis categorization by demonstrating that not only do people actually discern differences between these two types of crises, but their awareness of a crisis type also influences their interpretation of the crisis, as well as their perceptions of and attitudes toward the target firm. In particular, this study shows that a CSR crisis, versus a CA crisis, is interpreted more seriously and, consequently, causes heavier damage to the evaluation of the firm. In addition, the halo effect of a favorable prior reputation was found in the CA crisis condition, but not in the CSR condition. Based on these findings, this study suggests that the recognition of CA and CSR crises provides a boundary condition, which determines divergent effects of crises on perceivers' evaluation of the target firm.     

Attenuating public skepticism: Effects of pre-crisis corporate engagement and post-crisis CSR initiatives on corporate evaluations

This study examined the effects of stated motives in post-crisis corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages, CSR-crisis issue congruence, and pre-crisis corporate engagement on public skepticism toward CSR and subsequent corporate evaluations. We conducted a 3 (motive of post-crisis CSR initiative: no statement vs. firm-serving vs. public-serving) x 2 (issue congruence: CSR initiative incongruent vs. congruent with crisis) x 2 (pre-crisis corporate engagement: absence vs. presence) between-subjects online experiment via Qualtrics panel (N = 378). The findings showed that stating a public-serving motive or launching a CSR initiative incongruent with a crisis heightened some aspects of CSR skepticism. We further found that pre-crisis corporate engagement interacted with stated motive and issue congruence to influence corporate evaluations. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Making nice may not matter: The interplay of crisis type,response type and crisis issue on perceived organizational responsibility

Experimental findings suggest limited effects for corporate social responsibility (CSR) to inoculate a company prior to a crisis. CSR may be viewed as accommodative window dressing that diminishes resources to assure corporate competence. When an accident occurs, emphasis in crisis communication on corporate ability (CA) may be more effective than CSR, especially when corporate culpability is low.     

Emotional crisis communication

Organizational crises are usually highly emotional experiences for both organizations and stakeholders. Hence, crisis situations often result in emotionally charged communication between the two parties. Despite the attention of organizations and scholars to the emotions of stakeholders during crises, little is known about the effects of the emotions communicated by organizations on corporate reputations. Through the use of vignettes, this experiment reveals that besides crisis-response strategy (diminish vs. rebuild), the communicated emotion (i.e., shame and regret) has a positive effect on corporate reputation. Mediation analyses showed that this effect of communicated emotion could be explained by the public's (negative) affective as well as cognitive responses (i.e., account acceptance). This study confirms that emotional signals embedded in crisis responses may affect corporate reputations by reducing feelings of anger and by increasing the acceptance of the organizational message. In doing so, this study provides a starting point for further exploration of the effectiveness of other emotions in crisis communication.     

Restoring reputations in times of crisis: An experimental study of the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and the moderating effects of locus of control

This study attempts to provide empirical evidence for Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), which provides guidelines for matching crisis response strategies to crisis types to best restore organizational reputations in times of crisis. The impact of crisis type and crisis response strategies on perceptions of corporate reputation is measured for 316 consumers participating in a 3 (crisis type: victim crisis, accidental crisis, preventable crisis) × 3 (crisis response: deny strategy, diminish strategy, rebuild strategy) between-subjects experimental design. The results show that preventable crises have the most negative effects on organizational reputation and that the rebuild strategy leads to the most positive reputational restoration. Moreover, the more severe people judge a crisis to be, the more negative are their perceptions of the organization's reputation. The interaction effect between crisis type and crisis response strategies on corporate reputation is not significant. However, a person's locus of control has a moderating impact on the relationship between crisis response strategy and organizational reputation. Specifically, the results show that people with an external locus of control prefer the use of deny strategies more than people with an internal locus of control.     

How financial crisis history informs ethical corporate communication: Insights from corporate communication leaders

This study explored how financial crisis history can inform corporate crisis communication practice across industries and over time. Thirty-eight interviews with chief communications officers (CCOs) and their counselors were conducted to explore what lasting lessons these corporate communication leaders learned from their crisis communication practice during the 2008 Financial Crisis. Key lessons learned include: 1) the importance for corporations to tailor their financial communication strategies according to victim vs. perpetrator perception and ethical response expectations held by stakeholders; 2) the importance of stakeholders, and employees in particular, when creating and implementing the plan; 3) the balance between speed and legal concerns, as well as the need for reducing complexity by making sure stakeholder communications are delivered with clarity and accessibility; and 4) a recipe for success includes honesty, transparency, trust/integrity, taking action to reform questionable practices, and abiding by one’s own personal morals. Insights from this study shed light on how learning contributes to ethical corporate communication practice in times of crisis and crisis spillover.     

Framing effect on the public's response to crisis: Human interest frame and crisis type influencing responsibility and blame

This study investigated the effects of a human interest frame and types of crisis in news coverage of a corporate crisis on people's responses to the crisis. To examine the effects, this study used 2 (human interest frame versus non-human interest frame) × 2 (an accident versus a transgression) mixed factorial design. The results indicate that the human interest frame influenced participants’ emotional response to the crisis and the emotional response influenced by the human interest frame was a significant predictor of blame and responsibility in a transgression crisis.     

How IKEA turned a crisis into an opportunity

In 2013–2014, the IKEA cuddle toy Lufsig was connoted as a symbol of the Chief Executive (CE) of Hong Kong, prompting stakeholders to make negative associations with the corporation. Our study examines how IKEA mediated communication on traditional media and social media to turn this crisis into an opportunity. This study informs corporate communicators and researchers about the integrated utilization of crisis response strategies in a sophisticated crisis situation.     

Resource-Based Crisis Management: The Important Role of the CEO's Reputation

This study provides empirical support for the positive power of a CEO's reputation as a strategic resource during and after a corporate crisis. Specifically, it demonstrates that a CEO's favorable reputation relieves many stakeholders' negative perceptions in a postcrisis situation. In addition, this study tests whether a particular type of CEO reputation will be more effective than another in dealing with different types of threats that a crisis poses to corporate reputation. This study introduces a resource-based approach to crisis that provides a wide, comprehensive set of strategies based on a variety of an organization's competitive resources.     

The social construction of crises in governmental and corporate communications: An inter-organizational and inter-systemic analysis

The paper analyzes the interplay between governmental and corporate crisis communications and how this in turn might lead to institutional changes in the specific case of the financial crisis (2008). The theoretical framework and empirical illustration enriches crisis communication theory in three ways: firstly by documenting how political and economic actors make sense of the crisis in their crisis narrations; secondly by analyzing how they attribute responsibilities and define solutions and consequences, which finally lead their actions and institutional processes; thirdly by investigating how they do this in relation to the micro-level (individual), meso-level (organizational) and macro-level (societal). The study demonstrates that the financial crisis is mostly inter-systemically and inter-organizationally co-constructed and points to the need of a more complex Processional Crisis Communication Theory (PCCT).     

Crisis communication: The mediating role of cognitive and affective empathy in the relationship between crisis type and crisis response strategy on post-crisis reputation and forgiveness

This study seeks to contribute to the growing body of research in crisis communication by exploring how two types of empathy; cognitive empathy and affective empathy, affect organizational reputation and publics’ forgiveness for an organization that is in a crisis. An online three (crisis type: victim vs. accidental vs. preventable) × two (response strategy: rebuilding vs. denial) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 648 participants (N = 648) recruited through Amazon’s research tool MTurk. The results of the study reveal that crisis type affects both cognitive and affective empathy and people are more likely to feel empathetic toward an organization that uses rebuilding strategies than an organization that denies the existence of a crisis. Theoretical and practical implications of empathy on corporate reputation and forgiveness are discussed.     

Never easy to say “sorry”: Exploring the interplay of crisis involvement,brand image,and message appeal in developing effective corporate apologies

This study examines how the interplay among crisis involvement, brand image, and message appeal impacts the effectiveness of an apology in the context of a corporate crisis. To determine apology effectiveness, a 2 (crisis involvement: high vs. low) × 2 (brand image: symbolic vs. functional) × 2 (message appeal type: emotional vs. informational) experimental design was employed. The results demonstrate that the three-way interaction is significant, especially in the low-crisis involvement condition. The study concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research.     

Exploring effective crisis response strategies

This study examines effective crisis response strategies using Coombs’ SCCT as a theoretical framework. Results of an experiment show that base responses (instructing and adjusting information) could mitigate reputational decline for a company during a severe, preventable crisis. The sole use of bolstering (reminding) strategy or no response is ineffective because it negatively influences consumers’ trust in the company, attitudes toward the company, perceived corporate reputation, and supportive behavioral intentions.     

The effects of CSR communication in corporate crises: Examining the role of dispositional and situational CSR skepticism in context

Although consumer skepticism about corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on the rise, research is sparse on the psychological dynamics of this skepticism, particularly when CSR communication serves as a company’s crisis response strategy. Employing two between-subjects design experiments, this study aims to fill this gap by looking at the role consumer CSR skepticism plays in consumer reactions to CSR communications in different types of crises. The study 1 results show that dispositional CSR skepticism did not moderate the effect of crisis type on attitudes and intentions when CSR was used as a post-crisis response strategy. The study 2 findings, however, indicated that situational CSR skepticism significantly mediated the impact of crisis type and CSR motives on purchase intentions only when the crisis stemmed from some accidental rather than preventable circumstance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Corporate dialogue in crises of China: Examining dialogic strategies and communicative outcomes in a child abuse scandal

Although dialogue has become a key concept in the field of public relations, little research has dealt with corporate dialogic strategies and communicative outcomes in crises of a non-Western context. Applying a mixed-method approach including both quantitative survey research and qualitative content analysis, this study analyzed both corporate dialogic strategies and public reactions in a social-mediated crisis in mainland China. Results demonstrated the corporation utilized both concertative and transformative dialogic strategies as the crisis progressed. After the crisis, concerned publics perceived low trust and moderate distrust towards the organization and reported five different communicative action intentions (i.e., mobilizing, information seeking, threatening, persuasion, and partnering). Trust and distrust exerted different impacts on publics’ post-crisis communicative action intentions and distrust was a stronger driver. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.