Organizational Crisis Response Research Articles

Mediated crises and strategic crisis communication of third sector organizations: a content analysis of crisis reporting in six countries

PurposeThis study aims to contribute to strategic crisis communication research by exploring international media representations of third sector crises and crisis response; expanding the range of crisis types beyond transgressions; and developing a framework that integrates framing and crisis communication theory.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative content analysis was applied to identify patterns in crisis reporting of 18 news media outlets in Canada, Germany, India, Switzerland, UK and US. Using an inductive framing approach, crisis coverage of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) between 2015 and 2018 was analyzed across a wide range of crises, including but not limited to prominent cases such as Oxfam, Kids Company, or the Islamic Research Foundation.FindingsThe news media in six countries report more internal crises in the third sector than external crises. The most frequent crisis types were fraud and corruption, sexual violence/personal exploitation and attacks on organizations. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three components of crisis response strategies quoted in the media, conditional rebuild, defensive and justified denial strategies. Causal attributions and conditional rebuild strategies significantly influenced media evaluations of organizational crisis response. Three frames of third sector crises were detected; the critique, the damage and the victim frame. These frames emphasize different crisis types, causes, crisis response strategies and evaluations of crisis response.Originality/valueThe study reveals the particularities of crises and crisis communication in the third sector and identifies factors that influence mediated portrayals of crises and crisis response strategies of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) from an international comparative perspective. The findings have relevant implications for crisis communication theory and practice.

How organization response influences public sentiment and behavior in online crises: The role of response strategies, tenor of discourse and executives

Social media can exacerbate the negative impact of organizations’ crises online. Effective communication is an important way for organizations to regain their reputations. This study, based on situational crisis communication theory, explores the impact of organizational crisis response strategies and the tenor of discourse on public online sentiment and behavior on social media. Additionally, it examines the moderating role of organizational executive’s participation in communication. For empirical testing, 770 online corporate crisis blog posts and 931,668 public comments from the Sina Weibo platform are selected. The results indicate that diminish and rebuild strategies demonstrate better communication effectiveness for each type of crisis. Moreover, a humanized tone and network style have positive effects public sentiment and support behaviors. Organizational executive’s participation in communication enhances the communication effectiveness of the diminish and rebuild strategies, while weakening the communication effectiveness of the network style.

Third sector crisis management and resilience: Reflections and directions

AbstractThis paper examines the challenges posed to third sector organizations by major external crises that from time to time beset national and global communities. In so doing, it unpacks the multiple characteristics and complexities of concepts and related issues involved in organizational crisis management and resilience. This reveals the importance of shared sensemaking, issue identification, response types and implementation, organizational coping and adaptation, exploiting strategic opportunities, and conditioners of organizational resilience. Related insights are drawn from selected empirical studies involving non‐profit organizational crisis responses to a range of major crisis events. Accountability and management control implications are induced, and a relevant ongoing agenda for accounting research is presented.

Is it too late now to say we’re sorry? Examining anxiety contagion and crisis communication strategies using machine learning

In this paper, we explore the role of perceived emotions and crisis communication strategies via organizational computer-mediated communication in predicting public anxiety, the default crisis emotion. We use a machine-learning approach to detect and predict anxiety scores in organizational crisis announcements on social media and the public’s responses to these posts. We also control for emotional and language tones in organizational crisis responses using a separate machine learning algorithm. Perceived organizational anxiety positively influences public anxiety, confirming the occurrence of emotional contagion from the organization to the public. Crisis response strategies moderated this relationship, so that responsibility acknowledgment lowered public anxiety the most. We argue that by accounting for emotions expressed in organizational crisis responses, organizations may be able to better predict and manage public emotions.

Stakeholder perceptions in organizational crisis management: exploring alternative configurations

Abstract Crises are socially constructed. Affected stakeholders of an organizational crisis conceive complex associations between their perceptions of the implicated company's response and about the company itself. The study moves away from a simple cause–effect view by deriving alternative configurations of these associations. This approach allows for a better understanding of how stakeholders attribute responsibility for a critical event and the resulting crisis faced by the company that caused it. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, we analyze insights of 325 families affected by an environmental incident in 2018 involving Colombia's largest company. We establish a correlation between stakeholders' perceptions of crisis response timeliness and credibility. Accordingly, we expand on how perceptions affect organizational judgments. Finally, we propose that trustworthiness and reputation are antecedents to how organizational crisis response is perceived and how these antecedents affect the degree of the severity of the company crisis.

Strategic crisis response: managerial implications and direction for recovery and survival

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide managers with insights to help survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. Given the environment at the time of this paper, this paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis like COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThe authors offer a conceptual framework, grounded in the attribution theory and situation crisis communication theory (SCCT), for managers to use when determining which crisis response strategy is most appropriate to use during a crisis. Propositions based on this framework are provided. This paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the framework proposed for organizational crisis response strategy and recovery, several insights for managers across a variety of industries emerge. Consideration of the best strategic approach to a crisis is essential, and time is critical. This framework provides a starting point for creating a proper response strategy when a crisis arises that is not within the organization’s crisis management planning. Managerial implications for several industries, such as restaurant, hotel, airline, education, retail, medical and other professional services, and theoretical implications to further the advancement of understanding are provided.FindingsThe findings of this paper demonstrate that organizations that apply an accommodative strategy during unintentional crises will survive, while during intentional crises, they will thrive in the marketplace. Similarly, organizations that apply an offensive strategy during unintentional crises will thrive, while during intentional crises, they will survive in the marketplace.Practical implicationsThis paper provides a framework highlighting strategies that best protect an organization during both internally and externally caused crises. The response strategy and crisis framework are based on the attribution theory and SCCT. Building on this framework, six propositions are postulated. In keeping with this strategy and crisis framework, this study provides several crisis response insights for managers across a variety of industries. These suggestions act as a guide for managers when assessing how to respond in the early days of a crisis and what to do to recover from it.Originality/valueThis paper provides a crisis-strategy matrix, grounded in the attribution theory and SCCT, to provide decision-making guidance to help managers survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. The authors provide multiple industry insights related to the “how to” and the “what to” in the recovery from and survival through internally and externally caused crises.

Together in crisis: A comparison of organizational and faith-holders’ crisis communication

Crisis communication research focuses on how organizations use communication to manage crises and shows how publics respond to organizational crisis response. Yet, organizations do not always deal with the crisis alone. Sometimes, publics can be active participants in crisis communication when they publicly defend the organization (Brown & Billings, 2013). Drawing on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) (Coombs, 2015), faith-holders (Luoma-aho, 2015), the concepts of co-creation of meaning (Botan & Taylor, 2004), and framing research (Entman, 1993), this research compared three sets of crisis communication strategies aimed at defending Tesla Motors, a luxury electric car manufacturer. An analysis of messaging on the company’s website, the kinds of organizational crisis communication strategies that were cited in the digital media news articles, and the crisis communication strategies offered by the organization’s supporters, or faith-holders, in the comments left in response to the digital media articles indicates that organizational crisis communication is co-created by different actors across different media, and that faith-holders’ communication plays an important role in this co-creation.

How Do Moral Values and Crisis Response Strategies Influence Individuals’ Evaluations and Support of Sports Organizations Post-Crisis?

This study examines how the moral values individuals possess and organizational crisis response strategies influence sports organizations. It showed that two moral foundations (fairness and purity/sanctity) had positive effects on moral outrage while care had a negative effect. When predicting team reputation, only one moral foundation (care) had a positive effect while the crisis response strategy had no effect. Furthermore, reputation had a positive effect on support intention, while both moral outrage and crisis response strategies had no effect. Implications were provided on what factors could function as effective buffers to prevent potential damages.

Exploring the effectiveness of image repair tactics: comparison of U.S. and Middle Eastern audiences

ABSTRACT Research into organizational crisis response effectiveness has tended to focus on Western case studies and U.S. samples. There are reasons to believe that audience response to image repair strategy is guided at least in part by broad cultural assumptions, though no research to date has explored cross-cultural comparison. This exploratory study compares U.S. and Middle Eastern audiences to see if individuals from countries and cultures outside the U.S. respond differently to organizational image repair tactics than people from the U.S. Results suggest that, while certain tactics seem to be overall better and worse across cultures, there are notable differences in how U.S. and Middle Eastern audiences perceive tactic effectiveness. These differences have implications relevant to those responsible for crisis response decisions. This report concludes with discussion on this matter and suggestions for future research.

Practicing transparency in a crisis: Examining the combined effects of crisis type, response, and message transparency on organizational perceptions

Public relations practitioners allocate a vast number of resources to constructing and building strategic messaging for targeted stakeholders. Two important factors within this message construction deal with organizational crisis responses and message transparency. The present study sought to combine concepts from Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and message transparency to investigate what combined impact these two fields in public relations research have on perceptions of an organization. By utilizing a 3 (crisis type) X 3 (crisis response) X 2 (message transparency) experimental design, this study (n = 898) found that victim crisis types, rebuild strategies, and high transparency messages resulted in more positive perceptions of the organization. A three-way interaction was also found, namely that use of highly transparent messages contributed to greater perceived organizational credibility when a rebuilding or denial strategy was used in response to a preventable crisis and when a diminishing strategy was used in response to a victim or accidental crisis. Practical and theoretical implications are also discussed.

What Inspired That Tweet: A Comparative Analysis of Official and Stakeholder-Enacted Crisis Responses During the Urban Meyer/Zach Smith Scandal

This study investigated the relationship between stakeholder enacted crisis communication and organizational crisis response. Through textual analysis, the reputation repair strategies that head coach Urban Meyer utilized in his four public statements regarding the Zach Smith scandal were identified. Next, 10,000 tweets from Ohio-based stakeholders were content analyzed to examine the extent to which stakeholders mirror the selected strategies employed by an individual enveloped in a crisis and amplify them through their own social media networks. Results showed that stakeholders engaged in three primary behaviors: rallying together by using the ingratiation and reminder strategies; mirroring some of Meyer’s official strategies; and utilizing their own strategies to attribute blame to other, external parties. Implications regarding how stakeholders utilize Twitter, itself, during a crisis were also proffered.

Emotions in Twitter communication and stock prices of firms: the impact of Covid-19 pandemic

In this paper, we explored two key aspects of organization theory—organizational communication in the face of crisis and the influence of emotions expressed in social media communication and their impact on stock prices of firms. We extracted emotional content from 189,303 tweets and collected financial data for six quarters for 105 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange from the Fortune 1000 list of companies. We operationalized a set of metrics to measure emotion in organizational tweets. Our analysis showed that the operationalized metrics to measure emotion expressed in organizational tweets were significant predictors of stock prices of firms. Further analysis showed a moderation effect of the crisis on the association between emotion expressed in organizational tweets and stock prices in the presence of control variables. The study provides a detailed analysis of constituent positive (happiness) and negative (anger, fear, and sadness) emotions in organizational tweets and their association with stock prices of firms. Practitioners and regulators may use the analysis and the metrics to assess organizational communication and better leverage Twitter for crisis response. This paper showcases organizational crisis response of Twitter and its financial impact.

Task force releases report addressing MH of students of color

The Steve Fund, a national advocacy organization focused on the mental health of young people of color, on Sept. 15 published a report with recommendations for college leaders to better support those students who are currently facing unprecedented mental health challenges. The recommendations were formed by the organization's Crisis Response Task Force, a group of students, mental health experts, colleges, nonprofits and corporate executives created to address the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its economic fallout on the mental health of young people of color. The report, Adapting and Innovating to Promote Mental Health and Emotional Well‐Being of Young People of Color: COVID‐19 and Beyond, also addresses the nation's “racial reckoning” and how the death of George Floyd and wide acknowledgment of systemic racism can put additional emotional stress on those students. The task force recommended that college leaders take a “trauma‐informed approach” to decision‐making and show empathy toward racial injustices experienced by students of color in order to build trust. Counseling centers and mental health support staff on campus should collaborate with faculty members; student affairs; and diversity, equity and inclusion staff members to respond to increased counseling center demand. Antiracist policies and the promotion of inclusion and belonging overall can have a positive impact on the mental health of students of color, the report stated.

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.

Tweeting about emergency: A semantic network analysis of government organizations’ social media messaging during Hurricane Harvey

While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it remains less explored as to how government and emergency management (EM) organizations use these platforms to communicate with the public in response to emerging natural disasters. Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to the realm of social media, this study examines the emerging semantic networks from 67 government and EM organizations’ official tweets during Hurricane Harvey over a three-week period. It identifies how multiple crisis response strategies—including instructing information, adjusting information, and bolstering—are constituted of different issues, actions, and organizational actors before, during, and immediately after the disaster event. Results suggest that government agencies use the strategy of instructing information predominantly before and during the disaster, whereas adjusting information and bolstering strategies are utilized more during post-disaster recovery. The study offers theoretical and practical implications of using a semantic network approach to studying organizational crisis responses.

Organizational Image Repair Tactics and Crisis Type: Implications for Crisis Response Strategy Effectiveness

Existing models of organizational crisis response effectiveness provide useful insights but are limited in terms of offering a guide for practitioners dealing with actual crisis situations. This analysis examines the relative effectiveness of image repair tactics based on differences in root causes of crisis events. Results suggest that certain image repair tactics are seen as the most and the least effective regardless of crisis type. At the same time, there were some differences across crisis types that could guide practitioner tactic choices. Limited results here and in past research raise questions about whether image repair tactic effectiveness can be usefully mapped to situational variables, such as audience or crisis type. This article concludes with discussion on this matter and suggestions for future research.

Effect of Perceived Crisis Response on Consumers' Behavioral Intentions During a Company Scandal – An Intercultural Perspective

Abstract In the context of a multi-national company scandal, namely Volkswagen's Dieselgate, we examine the effect of customers' perception of organizational crisis response on their revenge and avoidance intentions in different cultural settings. Using data collected in the US and in Germany, we are able to show that the perception of appropriate crisis response reduces customers' revenge as well as avoidance intentions. However, due to the domestic bias of German respondents, the mechanism linking perception of the organization's crisis response to the respective outcomes differs between Germany and the US. Our results demonstrate for the first time that domestic bias is not always associated with being an amplifier of positive factors; rather, in the context of an organizational scandal, it dampens the effects of organizational crisis response.

The World of Work and Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Societies: Lessons from the International Labor Organization's Crisis Response and Reconstruction Program

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how critical the world of work is to establishing rule of law in post-conflict societies. It will do so by placing the work of the ILO in the context of traditional rule-of-law theory and practice, discusses the ILO’s labor and employment-based post-conflict programs and activities, and highlights examples of successful activities engaged in by the ILO, trade unions and employer groups that can be models for more traditional rule-of-law activities.

Did BP Atone for its Transgressions? Expanding Theory on ‘Ethical Apology’ in Crisis Communication

Ethical communication during crisis response is often assessed by external perceptions of the organization's intentions, rather than an assessment of the organization's communicative behaviors. This can easily lead researchers to draw editorial conclusions about an organization's ethics in crisis response rather than accurately describing its communicative behaviors. The case of BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provides a prime example for the importance of accurately assessing the ethical content of an organization's crisis response because the ethics of BP's response have been discussed in news and academic sources; yet little direct examination of the ethical content in BP's response has occurred. The findings have implications for communication ethics, social media engagement, and crisis communication more generally.

Competing frames and tone in corporate communication versus media coverage during a crisis

Managing corporate communication through a crisis response strategy may limit negative media coverage, thereby affecting public perceptions during crisis situations. However, because different stakeholders are being informed via multiple channels, different messages may reach the public, creating competing frames. This study examines how an organization's crisis response affects media coverage. Using content analysis, media coverage messages (N=128) and corporate communication messages (N=24) were compared regarding an organization in crisis. All messages were analyzed considering five news frames and tone (ranging from very negative to very positive) toward internal and external stakeholders. Findings indicate that the media reframed corporate communication messages, using more and different news frames than the organization in crisis. Furthermore, media coverage messages and corporate communication messages differed in the mentioned aspects within various news frames. All stakeholders are covered significantly more negatively in media coverage.