Contextual awareness on organizational crises: National context and crisis attribution

Abstract

This study examines the influences of national contexts on crisis attribution to address the recent appeal for a more contextually sensitive perspective in crisis communication research. Specifically, this study revisits the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) in the Chinese context by taking an online discussion on Weibo about a high-profile homicide in a McDonald’s restaurant as the case. Built on the framing theory and categorization of national contexts, an inductive framing analysis of 100 top forwarded posts demonstrates a complex negotiation process of context-embedded frames and its significant impacts on crisis attribution. The model of SCCT is then refined by integrating national contexts into the concept of ‘modifier’. Implications for both theory and practice are also discussed.

Relational immunity? Examining relationship as crisis shield

“…Rather than gauge the influence of a relationship on an organization's ability to weather a crisis, we examined the influence of a crisis on stakeholders to weather the relationship with an organization. With much of the research focusing on crisis impact on organizational reputation (Coombs, 2016; Page, 2019; Zhao, 2020), this study suggests that relational impact should be considered, as well. The following sections examine the ways a crisis may impact the stakeholder–organization relationship.…”

“…Despite the importance of perception in understanding a crisis, most studies have investigated the organizational context of a crisis, including primarily corporate response and messaging (Moerschell & Novak, 2020; Zhao, 2020). Few studies have examined the perception of stakeholders directly affected by a crisis (Hocke‐Mirzashvili, Kelly, & Macdonald, 2015), though stakeholder perception has become a growing area of investigation (Lim, 2017; Roh, 2017; Cheng & Shen, 2020).…”

“…Other research has expanded blame to factors such as predictability, controllability and even type of corporate response in a crisis (Hong & Kim, 2019; Jin, 2009, 2010; Kim, 2019). Most recently, Zhao (2020) argued that blame is socially constructed, cultural and contextual.…”

“…Blame, however, has posed difficulties for crisis research because studies have struggled to establish more than a small effect of attribution‐based strategies on mitigating crisis impact (Zhao, 2020). In a recent study, Page concluded that attribution, alone, was not sufficient to explain the reputation threat posed by a crisis.…”

“…Specifically, the current study employed surveys with students to consider two factors that may affect the student–university relationship: blame and empathetic response. Much of the crisis literature has examined blame attribution, with varying results (Page, 2019; Zhao, 2020), while few crisis studies have considered the other side of the emotional spectrum: empathy. Accordingly, this study examined the influence of a crisis on relational perceptions by investigating students’ perceptions of their relationship with the university following the on‐campus shooting.…”