FEMALE OR MALE
SPOKESPERSON DURING A
CRISIS TO HAVE A POSITIVE
CORPORATE REPUTATION?
An experimental study into the effects of spokesperson’s gender and
crisis type on corporate reputation.
Name
: Irma Rifqayani
Student Number : 12031100
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s Programme Communication Science
Corporate Communication
Supervisor’s Name: Iina Helsten
Date of Completion: 26
thJune 2020
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Abstract
Corporate crisis often affects corporate reputation, despite the previous research attention to the crisis and corporate reputation, little is known about the effects of the spokesperson during a crisis. The spokesperson is at such a moment the representative of the corporate, therefore it is important to give serious thoughts about what factor in spokesperson that can help corporate prevent negative corporate reputation, one of which is spokesperson’s gender. The experiment in this study reveals that besides crisis type (victim vs intentional), the spokesperson’s gender (female vs male) has an influence on corporate reputation. This study confirms that the victim crisis results in a more positive corporate reputation compared to an intentional crisis. Moreover, a female spokesperson also has a more positive effect on
corporate reputation compared to a male spokesperson. However, this study did not found the interaction effect of the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type. This indicates that many factors can play a role in corporate reputation during a crisis and the selection of the right spokesperson in certain crises is really complex. Furthermore, this study provides a starting point for a corporate to be careful in their choices and for further research to explore the correlation between spokesperson, crisis communication and corporate reputation.
2 Index Abstract ... 1 Index ... 2 Introduction ... 3 Theoretical Framework ... 6
Crisis Types and Corporate Reputation ... 6
Gender and Corporate Reputation ... 8
Relation amongst Spokesperson's Gender, Crisis Type, and Corporate Reputation ... 9
Method ... 11 Research Design ... 11 Stimulus material ... 12 Spokesperson’s Gender ... 12 Crisis Type ... 12 Pre-test ... 13
Procedure and Participants ... 13
Measurements ... 16 Independent Variables ... 16 Dependent Variable ... 17 Results ... 17 Manipulation Check ... 17 Hypothesis Testing ... 18 Crisis Type ... 18 Spokesperson’s Gender ... 19
Interaction Effect of Spokesperson’s Gender and Crisis Type ... 20
Discussion ... 21
Conclusion and Implications ... 24
Limitations and Future Research Suggestions ... 25
References ... 28
Appendix 1 ... 35
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Introduction
In a corporate crisis, crisis communication is acknowledged to play a crucial role. The strategy that corporates use to communicate will determine their reputation that emerges from public attitude (Van Riel & Fombrun, 2007). However, one thing that corporates should perform before formulating a strategy for their crisis communication is to examine their crisis type. Coombs (2007) has identified three crisis types in terms of corporate crisis responsibility, namely: 1. the victim, where the crisis responsibility is very weak; 2. the accidental, the
attribution to the crisis responsibility is minimal; 3. the intentional, when the crisis responsibility is very strong. A remarkable part of crisis management is to detect and prevent crises since the best situation for a corporate is to avoid the crisis. However, a crisis is a situation that most organizations have to face during their existence (Coombs, 1999). Consequently, when the crisis occurs, corporates need to deliver their message in a form of crisis response.
To deliver crisis response, the corporate should consider one of the elements related to crisis communication, for instance, the spokesperson, in order to have a more positive reputation (Coombs, 1999). Due to the role of the spokespersons in crisis communication and the elements evolving around them, it is interesting to observe a causal relationship between one of the
elements in the corporate's spokesperson, namely gender, and the public attitude during a specific crisis type. Public attitude and opinion are not only based on verbal content such as a message in the crisis response strategies but nonverbal visual aspects are also a crucial form of
communication, since these aspects have important consequences on an individual's perception (Aguinis & Henle, 2001). One of the visual aspects that is relevant for crisis communication is the spokesperson's gender, thus in crisis communication research this element should be taken into account. Perception towards gender portrayal showed that there was a difference in how
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people perceived man and woman as a spokesperson, namely, women were likely to be perceived as sensitive and vulnerable while men as resistant to pain and powerful (Tuncay Zayer and Coleman, 2015).
Corporate reputation is increasingly important to the value of a corporate, both for the financial and non-financial aspects (Wang, Yu, & Chiang, 2016). Accordingly, corporates should consider the importance of their reputation to achieve business goals and keep their
competitiveness. Van Riel and Fombrun (2007) defined corporate reputation as a reflection on both internally with the corporate's employees and externally with their stakeholders. This reflection is part of the corporate ability to deliver their product, services, and value. A crisis can affect the corporate reputation and result in reputational damage for a corporate (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). During a crisis, corporate reputation is often under scrutiny, therefore
companies tend to protect their reputation (Coombs, 2007). Furthermore, a crisis can also have an effect on public trust (McManus, Holtzman, Lazarus, Anderberg, & Jahansoozi, 2006). Trust can increase the possibility of public relationship engagement with the organizations after the crisis occurs (Huang, 2008). Therefore, in order to have a more favorable corporate reputation, the organization should establish its public trust also in case of a crisis occurrence (Gallagher, 2013).
Previous studies in the field of corporate communication indicated the importance of crisis communication strategies. Dutta and Pullig's (2011) study results confirmed that crisis response strategy was important in affecting customers' brand-related and value-related judgments after the crisis occurred. Furthermore, Van der Meer and Verhoeven's (2013) study demonstrated the dynamic characteristic of public and media framing toward crisis. If the crisis is not handled with the correct strategy, it can potentially lead to an increase in the negative effect on public perception of the crisis. Another research about response strategy in crisis
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communication was conducted by Roshan, Warren, and Carr (2016). It provided insight on how crisis response in specific crisis types was important to protect organization reputation.
Moreover, research about crisis management also concluded that two factors, namely crisis communication strategy and form of crisis response, had contributed to the trust and relational commitment after crisis managers controlled the influences of crisis type and organization association (Huang, 2008). Although these studies provide the guidelines to use rebuild
communication strategies during high attribution to the crisis responsibility during a crisis, only limited studies address the gender role of corporates' spokespersons during crises (Crijns, Claeys, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017; Maiorescu, 2016; Wei & Ran, 2019).
In terms of academic contribution, the gender of spokespersons is an important attribute for crisis communication strategy since it determines the gender-specific communication styles that affect public opinion (Maiorescu, 2016) and crisis response strategies (Crijns, et al., 2017), nevertheless both studies emphasis were on the effect of different communication styles
(Maiorescu, 2016) and effect of empathy in terms of gender similarity of respondents to the spokesperson (Crijns, et al., 2017). Accordingly, there is a research gap that this study was trying to fill and examined how the spokesperson's gender influences corporate reputation during a crisis. Moreover, this research is expected to contribute to scientific knowledge by providing new insight and analysis on how the spokesperson's gender in certain crisis types will determine the public attitude towards the organization's reputation.
In terms of social relevance, this study aims to increase awareness over best practices in crisis communication management for organization reputation in relation to the gender-specific role of the spokesperson. As it is stated by Flanagin and Metzger (2003) that the gender of the source affects the perception of the information credibility, moreover the gender of a
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spokesperson can affect the perceived credibility and trustworthiness of the spokesperson (Armstrong & McAdams, 2009). Accordingly, this study will bring importance to corporate in order to fulfill their goal to have a positive reputation after crisis communication activities. Moreover, corporate have to take gender into account because people may have different perceptions of the message that is delivered by males or females.
Moreover, in addition to the lack of research on the spokesperson’s gender to the corporate reputation during a crisis, it also interesting to observe the different effects in a different crisis context. Thus, it is important to study this aspect, since the difference in the attribution of the crisis responsibility leads to the different perception from people (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). This research focuses on two crisis types with significant differences in the attribution to the crisis responsibility namely the victim crisis (weak attribution to the crisis responsibility) and intentional crisis (strong attribution to the crisis responsibility). Therefore, the following research question is proposed:
RQ: To what extent does a corporate’s spokesperson’s gender affect corporate reputation in a victim and intentional crisis?
Theoretical Framework Crisis Types and Corporate Reputation
Coombs (2007) defined a crisis as "a sudden and unexpected event that threatens to disrupt an organization's operations and poses both a financial and a reputational threat" (p.164). The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is developed to examine which crisis response strategy should be applied in a specific crisis or crisis type to repair the corporate reputation in the best possible way (Coombs, 2007). A crisis is considered a reputational threat
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since, during the crisis, public evaluations towards the organization often lead to negative opinions (Coombs, 2007). The SCCT is useful to predict the level of reputation threat caused by the crisis as a different crisis leads to different evaluations that will affect the reputation. The SCCT divides crisis types on the attribution of crisis responsibility for the organization (Coombs, 2007), namely the victim cluster, identified as crisis with weak attribution of crisis responsibility, the accidental cluster, that is also recognized as having a minimal level of responsibility, and the intentional cluster, which has forceful attribution of crisis responsibility.
Furthermore, in their attribution theory, Coombs and Holladay (1996) mentioned that when the public perceived organization had high attribution to crisis responsibility, then the public would develop a negative image of the organization. The result of the study further revealed that the crisis types were related to the corporate reputation, since there was a relationship between the perception of the organization's responsibility of the crisis and the perception of how the organization had control over the crisis. If the organization was considered capable of preventing a crisis (intentional cluster), the organization would likely be portrayed with a negative reputation (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). Moreover, corporate reputation was less favorable in an intentional crisis than in both victim and accidental crises; however, there were no significant differences in reputation between the victim and accidental crisis (Claeys, Cauberghe, & Vyncke, 2010). During the crisis, the publics' attitudes toward the organization will be
influenced by their evaluation of external and internal attribution of crisis responsibility. The higher the organization's responsibility is perceived in the crisis, the angrier the public will be (Lu & Huang, 2018).
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H 1: Victim crisis type will generate a more positive corporate reputation than intentional crisis type.
Gender and Corporate Reputation
Gender perceptions influence the maintenance of corporate reputation in crisis
communication management. A study on the gender differences in public relations by Aldoory and Tooth (2002) revealed that the corporate was more likely to hire women compared to men as public relations due to the gender ideology that preferred women's social skills compared to men. The women's skill in the communication field is often connected with the perception of
femininity and practice of a two-way symmetrical model (Grunig & Grunig, 1992), which means women most likely build mutual understanding with their public through a mechanism of
dialogue. People often associate gender with specific communication styles especially during a crisis such as male and female focuses, goals, and how to deliver the response (Maiorescu, 2016). Furthermore, a study by Maiorescu (2016) showed that during a crisis, women were more
focused on the relationship with stakeholders which were endangered due to the crisis. Although this difference does not always exist, the gender stereotype that is on people's minds will affect their attitude towards the spokesperson's gender (Whipple & McManamon, 2002).
When a corporate faces a crisis, a crisis response should be addressed by the crisis manager to keep the corporate reputation intact (Coombs, 2007). The SCCT forms three groups of primary crisis response strategies, namely: 1. deny (attack the accuser, denial, and scapegoat); 2. diminish (excuse and justification); and 3. rebuild (compensation and apology) (Coombs, 2007). An apology is one of the crisis response strategies acknowledging the corporate's responsibility towards crisis by asking forgiveness from the stakeholders (Coombs, 2007). Moreover, based on a study about a corporate apology, it emerged that the gender of the
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apologizer could influence public forgiveness when a company did wrongdoings (Wei & Ran, 2019). When women apologized during the value-related crisis, the public would perceive it as warmer and less offensive, therefore it would lead to greater forgiveness (Wei & Ran, 2019).
In the time of crisis, an organization needs effective communication with stakeholders to deal with the uncertain situation (Coombs, 1999). The organization must choose the right spokesperson in the crisis to resist corporate reputational damage (Arpan, 2002). During one of the stages of crisis coverage in the media, where an explanation of the crisis to the audiences occurred, people were more sensitive to nonverbal cues such as visual characteristics (Coleman & Wu, 2006). One of the most prominent visual characteristics is the gender of the source that delivered the message and it has a direct influence on the effectiveness of the persuasive attempt (Flanagin & Metzger, 2003). Research about gender and social influence showed that
likeableness and warmth were often associated with women's gender roles, since women were frequently connected to a caretaker role (Carli, 2001). In the case of trustworthiness, a female spokesperson is perceived as more trustworthy in the commercial compared to a male
spokesperson (Brownlow & Zebrowitz, 1990). As a result, the following hypothesis is constructed:
H 2: A female spokesperson will generate a more positive corporate reputation than a male spokesperson.
Relation amongst Spokesperson's Gender, Crisis Type, and Corporate Reputation
Gender and the degree of responsibility from an organization that is attributed to the crisis might influence corporate reputation. The high responsibility of the organization in the crisis leads to high negative emotions from the public (Coombs, 2007). Based on this, when a
10 preventable crisis occurs, for which an organization's amount of responsibility is perceived as high, the public will highly develop negative emotions such as anger towards the organization (Coombs, 2007). Van der Meer and Verhoeven (2014) confirmed that emotional signals related to the crisis response message from an organization may reduce the feeling of anger from the public and therefore increase the acceptance of the message. In gender-emotion stereotypes, women are often considered more attached to emotion compare to men (Brescoll, 2016). Consequently, in a crisis where the public's negative emotion is high due to the high attribution of responsibility of a corporation, the use of women spokesperson may reduce the anger since women are perceived as more emotionally involved in crisis response.
Furthermore, crisis can also affect public trust in companies, and trust is a crucial attribute that organizations must have to maintain good relations with their stakeholders (McManus, et al., 2006). To maintain a good corporate reputation, trust in an organization is an important part that must be emphasized by the corporate. During a crisis, when stakeholders acknowledge a high responsibility for the organization, negative emotions (e.g., anger) will be more likely to increase and positive emotions (e.g., sympathy) will decrease (Coombs, 2007). Meanwhile, on the one hand, positive emotions are useful to increase trust, on the other hand, emotions with negative valences, such as anger, decrease trust (Dunn & Schweitszer, 2005). To be considered
trustworthy especially during a crisis, the selection of an appropriate spokesperson is essential. The organization's spokesperson must be seen as a reliable, objective, and honest source (Ohanian, 1990). Since women more often occupy domestic and caring roles, they are seen to care more about others and are thus associated with trustworthiness (Brownlow & Zebrowitz, 1990; Carli, 2001).
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Accordingly, this present study aims to examine the interaction effect of the
spokesperson's gender and crisis type, which might help to further uncover the impact of these two factors on corporate reputation. In sum, this study hypothesizes that:
H 3: Female spokesperson will generate a more positive corporate reputation than a male
spokesperson in a corporate crisis. This effect will be stronger in the victim crisis type than in the intentional crisis type.
Method
In order to find a causal relationship between a spokesperson's gender and corporate reputation with crisis type as the moderator, in this study, an online experiment was selected. Bryman (2012) demonstrated that an experiment is a research method with the strongest internal validity and the most suitable method to find the causal relationship between independent and dependent variables.
Research Design
This study used a 2x2 between-subject factorial design: Crisis Type (2 levels, between) x Gender of Spokesperson (2 levels, between) as shown in Table 1. The participants were exposed to a small fictional article from a fictional news site, one with a female spokesperson during a victim crisis, one with a female spokesperson during an intentional crisis, one with a male spokesperson during a victim crisis, and one with a male spokesperson during an intentional crisis (see Appendix 2). The respondents received a link to the experiment, each respondent was randomly exposed to an article. In the four conditions a fictional company with a scenario in two types of crisis, namely: Victim and Intentional crisis. In the article were also present the picture of the spokesperson and the name of the spokesperson. A pronoun (he/she) was used in-text to
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clearly indicate the gender of the spokesperson. After reading the assigned scenario, participants filled in the online questionnaire developed to measure their attitude towards corporate
reputation. Tabel 1
Between Subjects Factorial Design
Factor: Public Attitude towards Corporate Reputation Crisis Type Spokesperson’s Gender
Female Spokesperson Male Spokesperson
Intentional Condition 1 Condition 2
Victim Condition 3 Condition 4
Stimulus material Spokesperson’s Gender
This study used as manipulation pictures of spokespersons, one was female and the other was a male with an almost similar face, uniform, and same background to avoid the attractiveness bias. This choice was based on the consideration that the attractiveness of the spokesperson might lead to a confounding variable (Gravetter & Forzano, 2014) therefore will lead to the uncertainty of whether the effect is only affected by the spokesperson's gender. In addition to the picture, this study also used an international common name, Jane for female spokesperson and John for a male spokesperson, to clearly indicate his or her gender.
Crisis Type
This factor was manipulated by stating the cause of the crisis according to the crisis type, i.e. for victim crisis type, the cause of the crisis was a natural disaster while for intentional crisis type, the cause was human error. Both fictional articles explained the same crisis with the same
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story, namely the major blackout in an area as a result of a broken transmission; nonetheless, the difference was in the cause of the broken transmission. In both articles, the crisis response strategy was asking for an apology so that the conditions would be more comparable. Pre-test
To control whether the respondents recognized the correct stimulus materials for the main study, a pre-test was conducted. In the pre-test, twelve people participated (17% male, 83% female). In the beginning, the respondents looked at the fictional article assigned to them randomly, and they were asked to identify the spokesperson's gender in the article. As a result, 91.67% of respondents recognized the female and male spokesperson in the article correctly. Thus, the pre-test result suggested that the spokesperson's manipulation was effective. Secondly, the participants then asked to evaluate the crisis caused in the articles they are randomly assigned to, where a human-error reason indicated the intentional crisis and weather-related reason as an indicator for victim crisis type. As intended, 83.35% of respondents correctly answered the question. In other words, the respondents could distinguish the weather-related reason in a crisis as a victim crisis type and human-error reason as an intentional crisis type. Thus, it was
concluded that crisis type manipulation was effective. The pre-test confirmed that both manipulation materials were effective to be carried in the experiment.
Procedure and Participants
This study used a convenience sampling as the sampling method, considering the study objective is to gain a response rate in limited cost and the ease of accessibility (Bryman, 2012). This sampling method is an effective method in this study to gain more than 60% response rate, as a 60% of response rate is required for experiment study as well as a standard for publishability journals (Johnson & Owen, 2003; Sivo, Saunders, Chang & Jiang, 2006). The link to the online
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experiment was distributed to the respondents via social media (e.g., Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram) and approached them to participate in the study. At the beginning of the online experiment, the respondents were informed about their rights according to the informed consent and ethical issue rules by the University of Amsterdam. The first set of questions in the
questionnaire regarded demographic characteristics (age, gender, nationality, and education). Then, respondents were exposed to the fictional news article that included one of the four conditions randomly assigned to them. After reading the article, they had to answer questions about the spokesperson's gender and the cause of the crisis in the article. The next sets of questions were about the responsibility degree of the corporate towards the crisis and the respondent's attitude towards the corporate. Finally, they were thanked for participating in the study and informed about the use of a fictitious organization, case, person, and the news site. A total of 319 people participated in the study, with a demographic age of 18 years and above to avoid parental consent. Due to this, seventeen (17) participants were dropped due to uninformed age. In addition, to keep the sample homogenous, the participants had to obtain a Bachelor's Degree because homogenous characteristics in the sample will maximize the control and internal validity of the research (Thomas, 2011). Based on this, thirteen (13) participants were dropped due to the obtained educational background reason.
The analysis was conducted on a final sample of 289 (N=289) participants in total. The respondents were 33.2% male and 66.8% female with the age range between 21 to 50 years old (M= 30.56, SD= 5.51). The participants' nationalities most from Indonesia (58.1%), followed by The Netherlands (19.7%), and the United Kingdom (4.8%). Most respondents had at least a Bachelor's degree (50.2%), followed by a Master's degree (48.1%), and a Doctoral degree (1.7%). Each condition consisted of more than 60 participants, which was in line with Voorhis and
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Morgan's (2007) statement. They claimed that each group should consist of at least 30 participants to predict a medium to large effect size in the research.
To check if the randomization in the online experiment was successful and all four conditions were comparable, sets of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and chi-squares were conducted with the spokesperson's gender and crisis type as the independent variable while Age, Gender, and Nationality as the dependent variables. The results are described in Table 2.
Table 2
Means and SDs for Age as Randomization Check
*Not statistically significance at p> 0.05
As shown in Table 2, the participant's age is comparable in all conditions, both in spokesperson's gender, F (1,287)= 1.35, p= 0.274, and in crisis type, F (1,287)= 0.76, p= 0.384. The difference is not statistically significant. This means that the randomization is successful and the age is comparable in all conditions.
Dependent Variable
Independent Variables
Spokesperson’s Gender Crisis Type
Male Female Victim Intentional
Age* M= 30.18, SD= 5.26 M= 30.94, SD= 5.75 M= 30.85, SD= 5.59 M= 30.28, SD= 5.45
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Table 3
Chi-squares for Gender and Nationality as Randomization Check Dependent Variable Independent Variables
Spokesperson’s Gender Crisis Type
Gender* X2 (289)= 0.39, p= 0.533 X2 (289)= 0.85, p= 0.770
Nationality* X2 (289)= 21.49, p= 0.609 X2 (289)= 28.97, p= 0.221
*Not statistically significant at p> 0.05
As shown in Table 3, the differences in the participant's gender and nationality in all conditions are not statistically significant. This means that the randomization is successful, gender and nationality are comparable in all conditions.
Measurements
Independent Variables
Crisis Type. To measure this variable, the respondents were exposed to a small article
which differed in crisis type (victim vs. intentional). In addition, inspired by Claeys, et.al (2010), this variable was measured using the four-item 7-point Likert scale from the work of Griffin, Babin, and Darden (1992) (e.g., The organization is responsible for the crisis; external
circumstances are responsible for the crisis) for each situation. This item (see Appendix 1) was evaluated in an interval variable with a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). Due to the reliability of the items with participant's perception of the corporate's responsibility during the crisis was reliable (α = 0.86), all items were combined into a single variable (M= 4.29, SD= 1.66, skewness = −0.70).
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Gender of Spokesperson. This variable consisted of two options: male and female. In the
questionnaire, respondents were asked: 'What is the spokesperson's gender in the articles that you have read?' with closed answer options to the question, namely male and female. The level of this factor (see Appendix 1) was nominal since this study encoded male as 1 and female as 2.
Dependent Variable
Corporate Reputation. After reading the scenarios, the participants filled in the online
questionnaire to measure their attitude towards the company regarding the corporate reputation. Inspired by Crijsn, et al. (2017), to measure the organization's reputation, this study used Fombrun, Gardberg, and Sever's (2000) 10 item scale (e.g., I have a good feeling about this company; I trust this company) with all items measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) (see appendix 1).The original scale was 20 items in eight sub-scales, however, to reduce the length of the survey, 10 items were selected which still comprised the eight sub-scales. Three items were recoded due to the negative phrasing. Since reliability of the items was satisfactory (α = 0.96), all items were combined into a single variable (M= 4.58, SD= 1.35, skewness = −0.67).
Results Manipulation Check
This study controlled whether the participants recognized the spokesperson’s gender and the manipulation of crisis type as intended. Subsequently, for the spokesperson’s gender, 97.23% of participants correctly indicated the spokesperson’s gender in all scenarios. This satisfactory percentage indicated a successful manipulation stimulus. For the manipulation check of the crisis type, this study examined whether the organization was perceived as taking more responsibility
18 for the intentional crisis than in the victim crisis (see Appendix 1). An independent sample t-test was conducted to confirm this. The intentional crisis (M= 5.48, SD= 1.07) resulted in a
statistically significant higher perceived level of responsibility for the crisis by the organization compared to the victim crisis (M= 3.04, SD= 1.19), Mdif= 2.45, t(287) = 18.31, p<0.01), CIdif
[2.18-2.71]. Thus, the crisis type was manipulated as intended.
Hypothesis Testing
To address the main effects of crisis type (H1) and spokesperson’s gender (H2) on corporate reputation and to test the interaction effect of spokesperson’s gender and crisis type as predicted in H3, a set of univariate two-way analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used since the researcher wanted to compare means of more than 2 categorical independent variables which are spokesperson’s gender (female and male) as well as crisis type (intentional and victim) and corporate reputation as the dependent variable.
Crisis Type
The two-way ANOVA was performed to determine whether the crisis type affected corporate reputation. As stated, H1 predicts that the victim crisis leads to a more positive attitude toward corporate reputation compared to the intentional crisis. The analysis showed that the effect of the crisis type on the corporate reputation was statistically significant, F (1, 285) = 224.76, p< 0.001, η2 = 0.42. Accordingly, 42% of the variance in the average corporate reputation was explained by the crisis type. The size of this effect was moderate. To observe the significant differences between the two conditions of crisis type, a separate one-way ANOVA was
conducted with Scheffé follow-up tests to enable H1 assessment. All 2 subgroups were more or less equal in size and included more than 30 cases per group. In sum, the following analysis satisfied the relevant assumptions. The results of a separate one-way ANOVA, F (1, 287) =
19 223.01, p< 0.001, showed that in a victim crisis condition, the participants had more positive attitude towards corporate reputation (M=5.37, SD = 0.92, 95% CI [5.22-5.52]) than in
intentional crisis conditions (M=3.28, SD = 1.39, 95% CI [3.06-3.51]). In conclusion, the results support Hypothesis 1 since the respondent’s attitude towards corporate reputation is more
positive during the victim crisis compared to the intentional crisis.
Spokesperson’s Gender
The second hypothesis of this research is the spokesperson’s gender (male and female) can affect corporate reputation (H2). The two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant main effect of spokesperson’s gender to corporate reputation, F (1, 285) = 15.63, p< 0.001, η2 =
0.03. Thus, 3% of the variance in the average corporate reputation was explained by the main effect of the spokesperson’s gender, the effect was very small in size. To detect the significant differences between the spokesperson’s genders, this research also conducted separate one-way ANOVA with Scheffé follow-up tests to assess the H2. All 2 subgroups were more or less equal in size and included more than 30 cases per group, the relevant assumptions were satisfied here. The results of a separate one-way ANOVA F (1, 287) = 13.77, p< 0.001 showed that among those who were exposed to the article with a female spokesperson, the average corporate reputation was notably higher (M=4.65, SD = 1.43, 95% CI [4.42-4.88]) than among those exposed to the article with a male spokesperson (M=3.97, SD = 1.67, 95% CI [3.70-4.25]).
These results support Hypothesis 2 because the exposure to the article involving a female spokesperson led to a more positive attitude towards corporate reputation than an article
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Interaction Effect of Spokesperson’s Gender and Crisis Type
According to H3, there is an interaction effect between the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type with the corporate reputation. This hypothesis predicts that the article involving a female spokesperson leads to a more positive corporate reputation than an article involving a male spokesperson, and this effect will be stronger during the victim crisis than an intentional crisis. The two-way ANOVA test showed that in the victim crisis, the respondents’ attitude toward the corporate reputation was slightly higher for those who were exposed to a female spokesperson (M=5.63, SD = 0.93, 95% CI [5.37-5.89]) compared to participants who were exposed to a male spokesperson (M=5.08, SD = 0.81, 95% CI [4.80-5.36]). The test in the victim crisis revealed a higher score than in the intentional crisis. In the intentional crisis condition, participants who were exposed to a female spokesperson (M=3.57, SD = 10.04, 95% CI [3.29-3.85]) established more positive attitude towards corporate reputation than participants who were exposed to a male spokesperson article (M=3.04, SD = 1.61, 95% CI [2.78-3.29]). Despite these converging differences, the interaction effect of the spokesperson’s gender with crisis type on corporate reputation was not statistically significant F (1, 285) = 0.005, p = 0.941. In other words, the result did not support Hypothesis 3 since there was no effect from the interaction between the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type on the corporate reputation. Below are the tables to
summarize the result for the two-way ANOVA in this study.
Table 4
Mean and SDs for Corporate Reputation
Spokesperson’s Gender Crisis Type: Mean Standard Deviation N
- Male - Intentional 3.04 1.61 79
- Victim 5.08 0.81 67
21 Spokesperson’s Gender Crisis Type: Mean Standard Deviation N
- Female - Victim 5.63 0.93 75
Table 5
Results of a two-way ANOVA
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F p η2 Spokesperson’s gender 21.07 1 21.07 15.63 < 0.001 0.03 Crisis Type 303.03 1 303.03 224.76 < 0.001 0.42 Spokesperson’s gender* Crisis Type 0.01 1 0.01 0.01 0.941 0.00 Error 384.24 285 1.35 Total 6087.97 289 Discussion
The study has discovered that the crisis type had significant effects on corporate
reputation. As predicted, a crisis with high attribution to the corporate resulted in a more negative corporate reputation. This is in line with Coombs and Holladay's (1996) study that during a crisis, when a corporate is perceived with high responsibility then it will lead to a more negative
reputation from the public as well as the development of anger towards the company (Lu & Huang, 2018) since anger and negative perception will lead to a negative attitude towards corporate reputation (Dunn & Schweitszer, 2005). In addition, this is also in accordance with Verhoeven, Van Hoof, Ter Keurs, and Van Vuuren's (2012) finding of crisis responsibility’s effect on corporate reputation. Moreover, this study established the result that the victim crisis type led to a more positive corporate reputation compared to the intentional crisis type. This
22 finding is in line with a previous study by Claeys, et al (2010), which mentioned that corporate reputation is more favorably in a victim crisis than in an intentional crisis.
Furthermore, this current study reveals that corporate reputation is positively affected by the spokesperson’s gender, as the study found a significant effect between the spokesperson’s gender and attitude toward corporate reputation. When a woman appeared as a spokesperson, the public showed a more positive response to the corporate reputation. This result confirms the perception that women stimulate greater forgiveness (Wei & Ran, 2019). Accordingly, corporate reputation still tends to be more positive is an indication that forgiveness is given. Furthermore, women are often perceived as emotionally warmth and this increases the likeableness from the public (Carli, 2001). This is in line with the present study’s result that evidenced that when a woman appeared as a spokesperson, the public showed a more positive attitude. Moreover, when a woman as a spokesperson makes a statement, trustworthiness perceptions towards the
spokesperson increase, in line with Brownlow & Zebrowitz's (1990) statement over a high level of trustworthiness towards women. Since trust is one of the indications to gain a good corporate reputation (McManus, et.al, 2006), this perception may also be used to infer a positive attitude towards corporate reputation.
In this study, it was expected an interaction effect of spokesperson’s gender and crisis type on corporate reputation, where a woman spokesperson leads to a more positive corporate reputation, and this effect will be stronger in a victim crisis. The analysis confirmed that a female spokesperson during the victim crisis results in a more positive attitude compared to a male spokesperson during the victim crisis, however, there was no significant difference between spokesperson’s gender and crisis type on corporate reputation. The theoretical framework assumed that woman is often associated with emotion expression (Brescoll, 2016), which
23
displayed emotions during a crisis is expected to reduce anger from the public since it shows more humanity side. However, according to Van der Meer and Verhoeven (2014), during a crisis, negative emotions’ impact will be greater than positive emotions, hence this factor might
influence the attitude towards corporate reputation. As emotion cannot be the factor to increase the positive attitude toward corporate reputation during a crisis, as a result a woman
spokesperson has a no different effect from a male spokesperson. Moreover, as mentioned in the theoretical framework, a higher trustworthy perception towards women will lead to a more positive corporate reputation during a victim crisis (Brownlow & Zebrowitz, 1990; Carli, 2001). Nonetheless, a study by Wei and Ran (2019) revealed that during a performance-related crisis, where the crisis directly related to the product and service, the male spokesperson is perceived as more competent and results in greater forgiveness. While in this study the crisis type was
distinguished based on the responsibility attribution not based on the performance-related, the respondents could still assume that the corporate crisis in this study was directly related to the service and product. Therefore, the respondents may perceive the spokesperson in this situation not only needs to be trustworthy but also with high competency. Another study by Armstrong and McAdams (2009) also discovered that males are perceived as more credible sources when people seek information in the media (informational form context). The material in this study was delivered in the news article where respondents might assume that the nature of the news was an informational form (Johnson & Kaye, 2002). Consequently, it might have influenced the non-significant interaction effect of the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type towards corporate reputation.
24
Conclusion and Implications
This study has shown that there was an effect of the crisis type and spokesperson’s gender on corporate reputation. It was found that the crisis type affected corporate reputation. During the victim crisis circumstances, corporate reputation scored higher than during the intentional crisis. Furthermore, a female spokesperson resulted in a more positive corporate reputation compared to a male spokesperson. However, the expected interaction between the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type was not found. Since there was no different corporate reputation between female and male spokespersons during victim and intentional crisis, there are several limitations of this study that may influence this result therefore future research can explore. To conclude, this study only discovered the main effects, this indicates that many factors can influence the corporate
reputation in a crisis. The role of the spokesperson is exceptionally complex, therefore
organizations should consider this factor carefully according to the context and the goal that they want to achieve.
From a theoretical implication, the current study extends the scientific literature regarding crisis communication research. Specifically, this study enriches a theoretical framework on the spokesperson’s gender and crisis type effects on corporate reputation. Previous researches had stressed the crisis communication strategy to response strategies and crisis type on reputation (Dutta and Pullig's, 2011; Huang, 2008; Roshan, et al, 2016). The present findings suggest that crisis management should consider not only verbal cues such as crisis response strategies but also other factor, such as the spokesperson’s gender. This is in line with Claeys and Cauberghe's (2014) findings of the non-verbal cues’ impact in the trigger stage of the crisis and at the aftermath stage of the crisis.
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Furthermore, the result of this study also provides practical implications. A corporate should think carefully about the spokesperson’s gender to deliver the crisis response since media often feature the spokesperson as an apologizer from the company when delivering the crisis news (Wei & Ran, 2019). In particular, organizations can benefit from the findings in this study by choosing a women spokesperson if they want to increase the trust perception from the public to gain a more positive corporate reputation. However, if the organizations have a different goal then they could consider other options, for example, if they want to be perceived as more credible then they could select a male spokesperson. Moreover, a corporate should also acknowledge the crisis type in crisis communication management. In accordance with this study’s results, a company should more carefully handle the intentional crisis in order to prevent negative corporate reputation from the public, since attribution of responsibility determines the public responses toward organizations (Verhoeven, et al., 2012).
Limitations and Future Research Suggestions
This present study includes several limitations in which future researches can improve. Firstly, the study employed only one crisis response, namely apology, thus this factor may limit the generalizability of the findings especially for the interaction effect of crisis type and
spokesperson’s gender on corporate reputation. Accordingly, it is suggested that future research uses other types of crisis responses according to SCCT such as denial strategies (e.g. attack, denial) and diminish strategies (e.g. excuse, justification) (Coombs, 2007). Moreover, there is a different perception from the public when the same crisis strategies are delivered by males and females (Maiorescu, 2016), therefore different crisis response strategies could also be included as a variable in future studies.
26
Secondly, the experiment in this study used a written news article with a photo of the spokesperson. According to Aguinis and Henle (2001), there is a different perception towards females on males in terms of their non-verbal behavior (e.g. eye contact, facial expression, body posture). Besides, voice and visual cues also affect perception towards spokesperson (Claeys & Cauberghe, 2014). Using audiovisual communication such as video may provide a significant difference effects of spokesperson’s gender during a certain crisis, for example, the difference in corporate reputation during a victim and intentional crisis when the response delivered by a female spokesperson with high pitch voice compared to male with high pitch voice.
Thirdly, this study used a fictitious organization and a fictitious case. Although this consideration is to prevent the respondents’ familiarity with the company that will influence their evaluation (Laroche, Kim, & Zhou, 1996), this might make the respondents difficult to empathize with the crisis. Consequently, future research could use existing organizations to involve
respondents more in the case, since according to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the high involvement situation will lead individuals to be more focused on the content of the message (Cacioppo, Petty, Kao, & Rodriguez, 1986). As a suggestion, it is necessary to carry out a base measurement to estimate the respondent’s existing attitude towards corporate reputation.
Lastly, participants in this study consisted of a different nationality. Moreover, the age group of the sample is a young adulthood group due to the convenience sampling method that was conducted in this study. However, the demographic data obtained were only operated for randomization checks. It would be interesting to implement a cross-cultural study using the nationality data because the perception of gender roles differs across countries, and this might influence the respondents' attitude. According to Mueller and Dato-on (2013), in low masculinity countries, women are expected to be caring and cooperating. Meanwhile, in high masculinity
27 countries, the expectation of those values is equal with competitiveness and assertiveness. In addition, Zhang and Jin's (2001) study showed that there is a difference between Chinese men and American men in male and female-oriented items that will be useful for gender orientation studies. Future research is therefore suggested to compare the impact of spokesperson’s gender in a crisis between countries with a different culture. Moreover, future research can also replicate this study in different age groups in order to find a significant result for an interaction effect between crisis type and spokesperson’s gender on corporate reputation, since there are different communication behaviors, beliefs, judgment and actions among age group young adulthood, middle age and older adult (McCann, Dailey, Giles, and Ota, 2005).
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35
Appendix 1
Item Wordings
1. Gender of Spokesperson
‘What is the spokesperson's gender in the articles that you have read??’ - Male
- Female 2. Crisis Type
What is the reason for the major blackout in the article? - Human Error
- Weather-Related
3. Organization Responsibility
“According to the crisis that company faces at the moment, in your opinion, to what extent is the company responsible in this situation?”
- The company is responsible for the crisis: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) - External circumstances are responsible for the crisis: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally
agree)
- The company is to blame for the crisis: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)
- External circumstances are to blame for the crisis: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) 4. Corporate Reputation
“After reading the statements from the spokesperson in the company, give your rate to these statements”
36 - I admire and respect this company: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)
- This company stands behind its products and services: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)
- This company has a clear view of the future: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) - This company is not well managed: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)*
- This company looks like a company that has good employees: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)
- This is a company that I cannot trust: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)*
- This company behaves ethically and responsibly: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) - This company did not maintain high standards in the way it treats customer: 1 (totally
disagree) to 7 (totally agree)*
- This company looks like a company that has strong prospects for future growth: 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree)
37 Appendix 2 Figure 1 Condition 1 Female-Intentional Figure 2 Condition 2 Male-Intentional
38
Figure 3
Condition 3 Female-Victim
Figure 4
