Examining the Public’s Responses to Crisis Communication From the Perspective of Three Models of Attribution

Yum, Jung-Yoon; Jeong, Se‐Hoon

doi:10.1177/1050651914560570

Cited by 21 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Weiner's attribution theory (Weiner, ) is used as an additional framework because, as Yum and Jeong () found, it is useful in examining why a crisis has happened after it has happened. It is also useful in deciding whether it is a crisis that is likely to happen again.…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

Painter

Martins

2017

Knowl Process Manag

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The discovery in September 2015 of diesel emissions software cheat technology in Volkswagen (VW) cars initiated a process of organisational crisis management and damage limitation by VW, reflected in the contemporaneous intensive production of public information statements, including press releases, statements to shareholders and investors, and transcripts of oral evidence. Through taking stock of a selection of these public information statements, this article examines the organisational communication management strategies employed to respond to the crisis situation, making an integrated use of attribution, crisis management, and information orientation theories as an interpretive lens. An interpretivist, hermeneutic approach was used to carry out qualitative content analysis on selected statements issued by VW. The analysis reveals that there is a connection between statements relating to attribution and statements relating to information orientation, at the time of the crisis and in preparing future action. Priorities for action form part of the overall crisis management and image restoration approach. Proposed changes in information orientation constitute a key dimension of the company's public response to mitigate the offensiveness of the crisis. The analysis performed demonstrates the applicability of the proposed integration of attribution, crisis management, image restoration, and information orientation theories to better understand and explain how large corporations respond publicly to organisational crisis episodes, more specifically the ways in which attributions, crisis management, and image restoration strategies are related to aspects of information orientation as both components and consequences of the crisis. | INTRODUCTIONOn September 18, 2015, the German automotive company Volkswagen AG (VW) received a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It had been found that certain diesel engines in cars manufactured by VW contained a piece of software-a "defeat device"-that meant certain emission controls were only activated during laboratory testing (Volkswagen, 2016a(Volkswagen, , 2016b(Volkswagen, , 2016c. The result of this is that in real world conditions, some engines were exceeding U.S. emission limits "by a factor of 15 to 35" (Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions, 2014). VW admitted that, unbeknown to the general public, about 11 million cars worldwide were fitted with the device (Volkswagen, 2015a(Volkswagen, , 2015b(Volkswagen, , 2015c(Volkswagen, , 2015d.What ensued from this discovery configures a situation of organisational crisis for VW, particularly as the series of events that unfolded was "specific, unexpected, and non-routine" (Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2003), created uncertainty and mistrust, and presented a threat to its brand reputation and commercial goals. In an appraisal of the kinds of threats organisational crisis incidents engender, Coombs (2007a) proposes that the greatest damage occurs at the levels of...

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Section: Theoretical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

Painter

Martins

2017

Knowl Process Manag

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“…Second, the public attributed KAL’s cognitive and moral legitimacy crisis mainly to Cho’s wrongdoings, holding her, as a corporate leader, primarily responsible for KAL’s legitimacy breach. According to Yum and Jeong (2015), members of the public are more likely to punish a corporate leader because they perceive that the leader deserves punishment for wrongdoing (retributive motivation) than because they expect that the punishment will prevent any future problem (utilitarian motivation). The public, in other words, tends to judge those who are responsible for a crisis and ask for them to be punished.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Legitimacy Matters in Crisis Communication: A Case Study of the “Nut Rage” Incident on Korean Air

Yim

Park

2018

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

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This study analyzes the December 2014 “nut rage” incident on Korean Air Lines by means of in-depth interviews with corporate communication experts. We examine how Korean Air managed this crisis of legitimacy, asking whether its legitimization strategy and tactics were effective. The authors argue that Korean Air breached both cognitive and moral legitimacy in terms of leadership, corporate culture, internal and external communication, and legality. The results demonstrate to other organizations what types of legitimacy resources and tactics are required in order to meet social expectations in their responses to crises.

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“…Previous research also suggests that higher perceptions of blame results in greater reputational damage for organizations (Coombs & Holladay, 1996;S. Kim, 2014;Schwarz, 2012) as well as negatively affecting behavioral intention towards organizations in crisis (Ping et al, 2015;Yum &Jeong, 2014). However, Bentley, Oosman, andShah (2018) point out that present theory building around crisis type struggles to account for contexts in which blame for the situation is more ambiguous, which is often the case with data breach crises.…”

Section: The Relationship Between the Issues And Organizations -Blame Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

Building crisis capacity with data breaches: the role of stakeholder relationship management and strategic communication

Diers-Lawson

Symons

Zeng

2021

CCIJ

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PurposeData security breaches are an increasingly common and costly problem for organizations, yet there are critical gaps in our understanding of the role of stakeholder relationship management and crisis communication in relation to data breaches. In fact, though there have been some studies focusing on data breaches, little is known about what might constitute a “typical” response to data breaches whether those responses are effective at maintaining the stakeholders' relationship with the organization, their commitment to use the organization after the crisis, or the reputational threat of the crisis. Further, even less is known about the factors most influencing response and outcome evaluation during data breaches.Design/methodology/approachWe identify a “typical” response strategy to data breaches and then evaluate the role of this response in comparison to situation, stakeholder demographics and relationships between stakeholders, the issue and the organization using an experimental design. This experiment focuses on a 2 (type of organization) × 2 (prior knowledge of breach risk) with a control group design.FindingsFindings suggest that rather than employing reactive crisis response messaging the role of public relations should focus on proactive relationship building between organizations and key stakeholders.Originality/valueFor the last several decades much of the field of crisis communication has assumed that in the context of a crisis the response strategy itself would materially help the organization. These data suggest that the field crisis communication may have been making the wrong assumption. In fact, these data suggest that reactive crisis response has little-to-no effect once we consider the relationships between organizations, the issue and stakeholders. The findings show that an ongoing program of crisis capacity building is to an organization's strategic advantage when data security breaches occur.

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Examining the Public’s Responses to Crisis Communication From the Perspective of Three Models of Attribution

Cited by 21 publications

References 44 publications

Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

Why Legitimacy Matters in Crisis Communication: A Case Study of the “Nut Rage” Incident on Korean Air

Building crisis capacity with data breaches: the role of stakeholder relationship management and strategic communication

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