A Relational Approach Examining the Interplay of Prior Reputation and Immediate Response to a Crisis

The role of a favorable pre-crisis reputation in protecting organizations during crises

“…Previous research repeatedly established that organizations with a more favorable reputation before a crisis still have a better reputation after a crisis than organizations with an unfavorable pre-crisis reputation (Coombs & Holladay, 2001;Lyon & Cameron, 2004;Wigley & Pfau, 2010). However, contrary to this study, prior findings do not offer solid proof for the shielding assumption.…”

“…Coombs and Holladay (2006) found that there can be times when a favorable pre-crisis reputation protects an organization from reputational threats. In addition, after a crisis situation, consumers are more likely to purchase products or services from organizations with a favorable pre-crisis reputation than from those with an unfavorable pre-crisis reputation (Lyon & Cameron, 2004). The positive impact of a favorable pre-crisis reputation as opposed to an unfavorable pre-crisis reputation on both post-crisis attitude toward the company and purchase intention was found in an experimental study using real corporate crises (Turk, Jin, Stewart, Kim, & Hipple, 2012).…”

“…Further research should also investigate the implications of this effect on various crisis communication strategies. For instance, prior studies suggest that organizations' pre-crisis reputation can impact the effectiveness of certain crisis response strategies (Coombs & Holladay, 2001;Lyon & Cameron, 2004). In addition, further research might look into the impact of pre-crisis reputation on the effectiveness of certain types of framing.…”

Ambivalence and Reputation Stability: An Experimental Investigation on the Effects of New Information

“…We believe that this paper can contribute to the existing research on organizational reputation in multiple ways. First, our results contribute to the stream of research examining the way in which new information influences an organization's reputation stability (eg, Bae and Cameron, 2006;Coombs and Holladay, 2006;Flanagan and O'Shaughnessy, 2005;Lyon and Cameron, 2004) by introducing the idea that new information about a company affects reputation judgments in different ways, depending on people's level of ambivalence prior to receiving the new information. In this way, we provide a more sophisticated approach to understanding how pre-existing evaluations moderate the effects of new information on reputation.…”

“…Such research has found, among other things, that new positive or negative information has a significant effect on people's reputation judgments about companies (eg, Carroll and McCombs, 2003;Meijer and Kleinnijenhuis, 2006). However, the effect of such information on people's reputation judgments is moderated by pre-existing judgments about the company (Bae and Cameron, 2006;Lyon and Cameron, 2004). For instance, if someone evaluates a company in a highly positive way, the effect of negative news will be smaller (eg, Coombs and Holladay, 2006;Decker, 2012).…”