Elaborating the halo effect of SCCT: how and why performance history affects crisis responsibility and organizational reputation

This study explored how and why a halo effect occurred during a food-related crisis in South Korea. The research questions were framed using situational crisis communication theory. A qualitative research method involving 16 in-depth interviews revealed that the good performance history of the company involved in the crisis caused people to attribute less responsibility to the organization, as they doubted the alleged cause of the crisis and interpreted the crisis as a one-time mistake. A good performance history reduced threats to the organization because people felt a personal bond with, and trust in, the organization, partly due to its long history of operations and relatively large size.     

An Empirical Analysis of Image Restoration: Texaco's Racism Crisis

As in any social science, theory in public relations is advanced by making and testing predictions from that theory. This article reports the results of a study designed to test some claims advanced by image restoration theory, a theory that is being used and cited frequently in crisis management research. The experimental study subjects conclusions from a case study to empirical analysis. More precisely, claims about the effectiveness of various image restoration strategies used in Texaco's efforts to combat a racism incident are tested. The results suggest that many conclusions drawn from image restoration case studies should be taken only as tentative. The results recommend a more rigorous application of image restoration theory to unpack its utility for crisis management and public relations.     

Crisis communication within a community: Bonding,coping, and making sense together

Crisis communication has been researched extensively from managerial and functionalist approaches, and little empirical research exists exploring the role of a community in helping community members cope with crises. Situated in this major gap, the current investigation adopts a community-centered approach that combines insights from chaos theory, uncertainty reduction theory, and sensemaking theory. This study used a mixed method design to examine the role of a campus community in dealing with a variety of campus crises. The qualitative study gave an in-depth understanding of how a crisis is perceived and the underlying process of how a community helps to make sense of a crisis. The quantitative study tested and further illustrated this process through path analysis. The major contributions of this study to the current crisis communication literature are twofold: (1) a crisis-induced community building model that demonstrates a community’s role in helping community members self-organize, collectively make sense of a crisis, and reproduce community experiences; and (2) instruments to measure a crisis and community functionalities. Theoretical implications of this study on chaos theory, uncertainty reduction theory, and sensemaking theory are discussed.     

Tracking the defining moments of crisis process and practice

Crisis holds the potential for profound change in organizations and industries. The past 50 years of crisis management highlight key shifts in crisis practice, creating opportunities for multiple theories and research tracks. Defining crises such as Tylenol, Exxon Valdez, and September 11 terrorist attacks have influenced or challenged the principles of best practice of crisis communication in public relations. This study traces the development of crisis process and practice by identifying shifts in crisis research and models and mapping these against key management theories and practices. The findings define three crisis domains: crisis planning, building and testing predictive models, and mapping and measuring external environmental influences. These crisis domains mirror but lag the evolution of management theory, suggesting challenges for researchers to reshape the research agenda to close the gap and lead the next stage of development in the field of crisis communication for effective organizational outcomes.     

The Effects of Corrective Communication and Employee Backup on the Effectiveness of Fighting Crisis Misinformation

Crisis misinformation, including false information about a crisis or a crisis-stricken organization, has become a fundamental threat to organizational wellbeing. Effective crisis response geared toward fighting crisis misinformation demands a more systematic approach to corrective communication. Grounded in misinformation debunking theory, this study aims to advance misinformation research in public relations and organizational crisis communication. An online experiment using a U.S. adult sample (N = 817) was conducted to examine the effects of corrective communication strategy (simple rebuttal vs. factual elaboration) and employee backup (present vs. absent) on perceived message quality, organizational reputation, and perceived crisis responsibility. Results show: 1) the use of factual elaboration and the presence of employee backup were direct contributors to crisis response effectiveness; and 2) perceived message quality mediates the effect of corrective communication. This study provides insights into advancing crisis communication theory and offers evidence-based recommendations for practitioners to combat crisis misinformation more effectively.     

Underlying processes of SCCT: Mediating roles of preventability,blame, and trust

Despite the prevalence of the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT; Coombs, 2007) in crisis communication research, few SCCT-based studies have examined how different crisis types affect post-crisis reputation. This study, therefore, attempts to uncover the underlying processes of SCCT. Specifically, this study examined preventability, blame, and trust as potential mediators of crisis type and organizational post-crisis reputation. A between-subjects experimental study (crisis type: victim vs. accidental vs. preventable) was conducted with 329 college students. The results revealed that crisis type had no direct effects on reputation, but it did affect preventability, blame, and trust. More significantly, the results showed that crisis type indirectly affected reputation in two distinct ways: (1) via a sequence of preventability and blame and (2) via trust. The study includes a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.     

Divorce and immigration: the social integration of immigrant divorcees in Israel

This paper attempts to supply information on what motivated some 7000 Jewish divorcees to leave their countries of origin in the last decade and settle in Israel. The study also examines the differences in social integration of immigrant divorcees who came to Israel from different political systems--authoritarian or democratic regimes. Finally, the study examines the extent to which immigrant divorcees, who generally arrive in Israel with children, are to be considered as a "high risk" social group requiring special attention and particular aid. Of the 287,487 immigrants aged 15 years and over who arrived in Israel between 1970-1980, 53.7% were women (sex ratio: 860 males per 1000 females), and 3.6% were divorced. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between divorcees from Anglophone and Eastern European countries in their motivation for immigrating to Israel. The former decide to immigrate primarily for individual reasons--generally after divorce--expecting that immigration will increase chances of remarriage. In contrast, those who came from Eastern Europe are motivated by political, economic, and ideological reasons; the issue of immigration often sparks the divorce crisis. Divorcees from Anglophone countries are less socially isolated, more likely to meet veteran Israelis, and more satisfied with their life in Israel. Eastern European divorcees usually restrict their social contact to encounters with other immigrants from their country of origin, are less satisfied with their life in Israel, and feel themselves more isolated and frustrated. Despite the difficulties encountered by this group, it was found that there are no marked differences between divorcees and married immigrant women in social integration. In Israel, immigrant divorcees cannot be considered as a "high risk" social group.     

Enhancing Employee Engagement via Leaders’ Motivational Language in times of crisis: Perspectives from the COVID-19 outbreak

By bridging theoretical perspectives from diverse disciplines including public relations, organizational communication, psychology, and management, this study advances a sequential mediation process model that links leaders’ motivational communication—specifically, direction-giving, empathetic, and meaning-making language—to employees’ organizational engagement during times of crisis. The model incorporates employees’ psychological needs satisfaction and their subsequent crisis coping strategies so as to explain the process that underlies the effects of leader communication on employee engagement. We tested the model in a unique yet underexplored crisis context: organizational crises triggered by the global pandemic of COVID-19. The results of an online survey of 490 full-time U.S. employees provide strong support to the model’s predictions. Our research extends internal crisis communication scholarship in public relations by addressing what types of leader communication strategies as well as how these strategies contribute to employee engagement in a holistic fashion. It also advances theoretical development of the motivational language theory, self-determination theory, transactional model of stress and coping, and organizational engagement—the four theoretical bases of our study—in the context of organizational crises. Lastly, the study results provide timely practical insights on effective internal crisis communication.     

Sports fans as crisis communicators on social media websites

Previous research has analyzed how organizations publicly respond in crisis situations. This study addresses a sports crisis, the University of Miami NCAA investigation, as an avenue for exploring how fans become surrogates for organizational crisis responses via the social media entity, Twitter. Using Coombs's (2007) strategy for reputation repair, analysis of 75 highly identified Miami fans with over 42,000 Twitter followers shows that fans were most likely to engage in (a) ingratiation, (b) reminder, (c) attack the accuser, and (d) divert attention as primary methods of coping with the scandal. New methods for reputation repair were also found within the analysis and implications for organizations, academic institutions, sports research, and crisis communication theory are articulated.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Testing Cross-National Conflict Shifting theory: An analysis of Chiquita Brands’ transnational crisis in Colombia

This study uses the Cross-National Conflict Shifting theory to analyze Chiquita Brands’ transnational crisis originated in Colombia with consequences in the United States. The research includes a content analysis and a case study conducted by U.S. and Colombian scholars. This research contributes to the global public relations’ body of knowledge by supporting 9 out of the 10 CNCS theoretical propositions, and further supporting the theory with 3 research questions and 8 hypotheses (2 partially supported, 6 supported).     

Beyond attribution: Building new measures to explain the reputation threat posed by crisis

Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) suggests attributed responsibility is the key factor explaining the reputation threat posed by crisis situations. However, studies on SCCT have found using its prescribed responses has a small effect. This research uses image repair theory’s conception of crisis to suggest that offensiveness is another factor that should be measured in order to explain the reputation threat posed by crisis. Using the literature of moral foundations theory, interviews with 20 people with expertise in public relations, and 338 participants from mTurk in a 2 (attributed responsibility)?×?10 (crisis offensiveness) experiment, this research develops valid, reliable measures of attributed responsibility for crisis offensiveness, and mitigating virtuousness, that explain 73.7% of the reputation threat posed by crisis in the sample, as opposed to 24.8% explained by attributed responsibility alone in the same sample. Implications for public relations scholars and practitioners are discussed.     

Beyond reputational and financial damage: Examining emotional and religious harm in a post-crisis case study of Hillsong Church

Religious organizations have largely been overlooked in public relations scholarship, particularly in the crisis communication literature. Additionally, research in crisis communication primarily focuses on the reputational, material, and financial damage caused by crises. This study addresses theoretical and topical gaps in public relations scholarship by advancing Spaulding’s (2018) emotional and religious harm categories for moral crises within religious organizations. Results of a qualitative case study of Hillsong Church’s Carl Lentz crisis suggest an emotional harm continuum exists for moral crises, and religious harm emerges as distancing as a religious protective measure. Findings advance crisis communication theory regarding the use of religious and renewal rhetoric and types of harm inflicted from crises, and assists practitioners in crafting post-crisis messages that prioritize stakeholder healing and the organization’s recovery.     

The state of social-mediated crisis communication research through the lens of global scholars: An updated assessment

We investigate the state of global social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) research through a content analysis of 189 discrete academic articles published in key journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index via the Web of Science from 2006 to 2020. We identify the patterns in the theoretical and methodological approaches and the types of crisis, social media platforms, and contextual factors examined in SMCC research. Our findings demonstrate the common trends and differences between regions or societies. Scholars from North America dominated this field and primarily used quantitative methods, such as content analysis and experiments. A Western-oriented situational crisis communication theory was the most frequently applied theoretical framework. Twitter and Facebook were the most frequently used social media tools, and natural crises were studied most frequently. Nearly half of the SMCC studies collected research data about crises within America, and none focused on African countries. Contextual factors, such as political, cultural, and media characteristics, were found to affect online crisis communication practices. Our study can thus inform future discussions by revealing current theoretical gaps.     

Reflections on a meta-analysis: Crystallizing thinking about SCCT

This article provides my reflections and comments on the meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) presented in this issue. The meta-analysis helps to crystallize strengths and weaknesses of SCCT and the research generated by the theory. No theory is perfect and every theory has limitations/boundaries. The meta-analysis helps to identify the boundaries for SCCT helping to understand when the theory works and when there are better options for informing crisis communication. By reflecting on the extant research, we can plot the direction for future research utilizing SCCT.     

The role of empathy in crisis communication: Providing a deeper understanding of how organizational crises and crisis communication affect reputation

This study advances our theoretical knowledge of how organizational crises and crisis communication affect reputation. Prior research solely emphasizes the importance of organizational crisis responsibility in this process. Three experiments show that stakeholders’ empathy toward the organization provides a second explanation. The first two experiments demonstrate that victim crises not only inflict less reputational damage than preventable crises because stakeholders consider the organization less responsible for the events, but also because they are more likely to empathize with the company. The third study shows that empathy can also explain the outcomes of crisis communication. An apology arouses empathy among stakeholders and subsequently increases reputation repair, unlike denial. The role of empathy in the crisis communication process has implications for both theory and practice.     

Differing conceptions of the causes of the economic crisis: Effects of culture,economic training,and personal impact

We report findings from a survey regarding the lay perception of the causes of the worldwide economic and financial crisis. Respondents (N = 2245) from a variety of countries were included: China (Hong Kong), Turkey, Russia, Israel, Germany, USA, and France. We have previously documented a range of factors that affects lay understanding of the crisis The present study expanded the database and focuses on the combination of factors that jointly predict whether the respondents view the crisis as a complex impersonal system that malfunctioned, or hold a moral/intentional view about its origins. We show that respondents from Western World countries, who were unaffected by the crisis and have economic training, interpret the crisis differently from all other respondents (i.e., those living in Turkey, Russia, or Hong Kong, and those who were personally affected by the crisis or without economic training). These differences have important implications on how policies are perceived and evaluated by the public, and should inform how they are presented to the public.     

The parallel power in organizations’ defense: Exploring faith-holders and their crisis communication

Publics can be active participants of discussions around organizational crises. Through digital media, they can provide information about a crisis, criticize crisis participants or defend the organization experiencing the crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 2014). Limited research exists on the active role of publics in defending the organization. A handful of studies have looked at crisis communication of active organization supporters, including faith-holders (Luoma-aho, 2015); however there is a limited amount of public relations scholarship about the nature of faith-holders, their communication under crisis circumstances, and whether they in fact attempt to help organizations in times of crisis. By using a combination of content analysis and rhetorical analysis, this paper examined the crisis communication strategies offered by the organization’s faith-holders in the comments to the crisis-related articles published on the websites of media outlets. Through a case study of Tesla Motors’ crisis, the paper determined that faith-holders are a powerful force in defending the organization during the crisis, using both traditional reputation repair strategies identified by Coombs (2015) as well as new strategies identified by the study. Faith-holders were not a monolithic group and differed in terms of what aspects of the organization they had faith. Their communication was not restricted by legal and ethical demands. The results provide insights into understanding of faith-holders’ communication during crises, and also highlight the need for reconsidering the situational crisis communication theory in respect to organizations' faith-holders.     

The Pervasive Impact of War-Related Loss and Bereavement in Israel

The study of loss as a result of war and conflict has been a mainstay of the bereavement field in Israel. The present article provides a brief background of Israel and its literature relating to loss and bereavement. A series of research studies based on the Two-track Model of Bereavement and covering both military and other losses are reviewed from the vantage point of their impact on and contributions to changing conceptualizations of loss. The article concludes with a review and analysis of the sociocultural trends that have shaped the approach to military bereavement in Israel.