of a crisis: an empirical study
By Cinta Maria Moreno Platero
Student ID: 12027111
Supervisor: Anke Wonneberger
Master Thesis in Communication Science (MSc) – Corporate Communication
Graduate School of Communication
University of Amsterdam
Abstract
This experimental study tested possible effects of the adoption of an acceptance versus an evasive communication strategy in organizational credibility within the context of a crisis communication disseminated by the media. Possible differences between non-profit and profit organizations were also taken into account. Results provide support for the main effect of communication strategy. As hypothesized, organizations applying an acceptance strategy were found more credible than those applying an evasive one. Further differences between profit and non-profit organizations were found as well. Non-profit organizations were assessed as more credible than profit ones. This effect was only significant for respondents exposed to an evasive strategy, which contradicts two of the hypotheses of the study. The findings present important implications for crisis communication and reputation-building theory, as well as corporate communication practice.
Introduction
Communication crises have acquired a pillar position within organizational communication studies during the past years (Ngai & Falkheimer, 2017). Due to the development of online platforms, audiences have a stronger effect on organizational
reputation-building than ever before (Albu & Etter, 2016). As publics gain power to interfere in the meaning-negotiation process, the speed with which an organizational crisis spreads is faster every day (Garland, Tambini, & Couldry, 2018). “A crisis is a sudden and unexpected event that threatens to disrupt an organization’s operations and poses both a financial and a reputational threat” (Coombs, 2007, p.164). This threat urges organizations to join forces in order to find the right post-crisis communication strategies that help preserving their level of reputation (Grappi & Romani, 2015).
The concepts of organizational credibility and organizational reputation are closely related (Balmer, Stuart, & Greyser, 2009). While there is a lack of agreement towards whether they should be studied as different constructs (McComas & Trumbo, 2001), there is a general consensus when acknowledging that credibility is a more immediate perception of an
organization’s image, whereas reputation refers to a more general idea of what an
organization stands for (Money, Saraeva, Garnelo-Gomez, Pain, & Hillenbrand, 2017). Thus, and taking into consideration that the aim of this piece of research is to study publics’
immediate reaction to the media disclosure of a crisis, credibility arises as a suitable variable to deepen with.
Research conducted by van der Meer (2016) emphasized the importance of the informational source chosen for the audience within the framing process of a crisis
communication. In terms of source, the traditional media remains as the main information tool chosen by the European audiences (European Commission, 2018). From an organizational perspective, results obtained by Liu and Kim (2011) revealed that organizations applied a
much greater variety of frames via their traditional than social media in the context of a crisis, so that the traditional media seems to be more reliable for organizations in order to provide an elaborated response. Thus, the traditional media arises as an essential framework to study the interaction between organizations in crisis and their publics.
Situational Crisis Communication Theory (Coombs, 2007) is one of the main and most referenced lines of research within crisis communication theory. It identifies four main
response strategies: denial, diminishment, rebuilding, and bolstering. Most studies have focused on the study of denial versus one or more strategies that imply a certain degree of responsibility acceptance (Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2014), whereas the evasive or non-response strategy one has been researched at a lower extent. It is for this reason that it seems necessary to deepen within the study of those crisis situations in which the lack of information control is such that organizations cannot conceive the denial strategy choice.
However, the term “organization” remains too broad, becoming necessary to focus on the effects of these strategies for different types of organizations. Concretely, the study of the (possible) different effects of a certain strategy for profit and non-profit organizations appears of great interest. This falls on: first, its social relevance due to the position of special social scrutiny to which non-profits organizations are subjected due to its high level of
legitimization (Vidal, 2014) and second, the theoretical gap existent in terms of differences between non-profit and profit organizations in times of crisis.
Non-profit organizations have been proved to be more dependent on the media than corporations (Jacobs & Wonneberger, 2017). However, a great number of NPOs lack the required tools to be applied in the context of a communication crisis (Schwarz & Pforr, 2011). Thus, the present study may be of great use for the field of corporate communication in terms of providing a more in-depth approach to crisis communication specifically
Thus, the aim of this piece of research is to study the effect of the adoption of a certain communication strategy (evasive versus acceptance) by an organization in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media on its level of credibility, taking into
consideration how this effect may differ depending of the type of organization (profit versus non-profit).
Theoretical background Situational crisis communication theory
The thread presented by a crisis communication urges organizations to find action protocols to mitigate its negative effects as much as possible (Patriotta, Gond, & Schultz, 2011). Situational Crisis communication Theory (SCCT) is the main research framework within crisis communication theory (Fediuk, Pace, & Botero, 2010). SCCT covers the study of different crisis response strategies applicable to crises of different characteristics (Coombs, 2007). According to Sturges (1994), crisis communication strategies can be categorized into three broad areas: “(a) providing information so that those affected can protect themselves from the crisis itself(b) providing information that help dealing psychologically with the effects of the crisis, and (c) and responding to the thesis dissemination in order to repare possible reputational damages caused.
The reputation-repair strategies proposed by Coombs (2007) are: denial (attacking the accuser, denial, scape-goating), diminishment (excusing, justification), rebuilding (apology, compensation) and bolstering (reminding, ingratiation, victimage).
Research conducted by Weiner et al. (1991) found denial and confession were the strategies that provoke most differing reactions amongst consumers, being denial the one provoking the most negative and confession the most positive reactions. In this line, research by Mcdonald, Sparks, and Flendon (2010) found confession to be the preferred approach no
matter what the crisis cause was. In contrast, a say-nothing option has been found to be ineffective due to its negative effect on the public’s trust (Park, 2017).
However, different studies question the efficacy of SCCT. This remarks the fact that the application of certain communication strategies might be necessary but not fully sufficient in order to restore the reputation and credibility of an organization. Instead, other contextual and organizational inputs should be taken into consideration.
Responsibility attribution theory
Following the SCCT model, the more responsibility a public attributes to an organization within the context of a crisis, the greater threat the crisis presents towards the organization’s reputation (Coombs, 2007). SCCT distinguishes between three clusters of crisis types: the victim cluster, which produces very little or no attribution of responsibility to the company; the accidental cluster, which produces low attributions of responsibility to the company; and the preventable cluster, which presents very strong attributions of
responsibility for the crisis to the company (Coombs, 2004). Thus, the type of crisis with the highest level of responsibility attribution is that provoked by an internal cause (Brown & White, 2010). Taking into consideration that one of the aims of this study is to shed light on possible differences in credibility scores between different types of organizations (profit and non-profit), it arises as necessary to adopt a crisis communication with a high level of responsibility attribution. For this purpose, a crisis with an internal cause is to be selected.
In this line, research conducted by Mcdonald, Sparks and Glendon (2010) showed that participants exposed to an internal crisis judged a company as significantly more responsible, less loyal and made more use of NWOM than those exposed to an internal one. The level of responsibility can indeed be influenced by the communication strategy applied. Concretely, when an organization adopts an acceptance strategy, it may provoke raise the level of responsibility perceived by its public (Lee, 2004).
Following research presented by Grappi & Romani (2015), publics are more likely to accept an organization’s defensive and evasive crisis response when they learn about it from the organization experiencing the crisis, while an acceptance strategy will be more likely to be accepted when they learn about it through a third party. Considering that the object of this study is communication crisis disseminated by the media (a third party) and with an internal cause (higher responsibility attribution), an “acceptance” organizational strategy may obtain a more positive response. Thus, our first hypotheses go as follows:
H1: If an organization adopts an evasive communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media, its level of credibility will be lower.
H.1.2: If an organization adopts an acceptance communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media, its level of credibility will be higher
Legitimization and reputation theory
Organizational reputation is a multidimensional construct (Lange, Lee, & Dai, 2011), understood as the stakeholders´ evaluation that has been formed over a certain period of time (Argenti & Druckenmiller, 2004). In this regard, NPOs in Europe are considered as generally more trustworthy than corporations (Wootliff & Deri, 2001). In terms of media framing, results follow the same tendency: NPOs received more positive coverage, whereas corporations and public organizations receive a mix of negative and positive journalistic evaluations (Wonneberger & Jacobs, 2017). On its side, organizational legitimacy is defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and
definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). In this regard, NPOs own a higher level of legitimacy than corporations as well (Maragia, 2002).
Applied to crisis communication theory, a high level of perceived company reputation allows consumers to understand the company’s current problems and develop a higher level
of sympathy towards it (Lishner, Batson & Huss, 2011). However, a higher level of legitimization involves as well a higher level of public expectations for the organization at stake to “do the right thing” (Wootliff & DeriWootliff & Deri, 2001, 2001), so that a crisis occurred within a non-profit organization could lead to a bigger negative impact than a profit one.
Cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning theory
Studies in motivated reasoning gave proof of the human tendency to rationalize those thoughts that are more favourable for our own interests or previous beliefs (Kunda, 1990). This term is directly linked to cognitive dissonance, defined as the tendency to rationalize attitudes that are dissonant to our previous attitudes or beliefs (Festinger, 1962). In order to reduce this dissonance, audiences may look for new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs (Khalil, 2017). Applied to crisis communication theory, this means audiences are thus more likely to believe an organization that is already perceived as more trustworthy. In this way, a previous positive attitude towards NPOs may lead to a higher tendency to believe their explanations and, thus, express a higher level of credibility towards the organization at stake.
These findings support research on political crisis conducted by Sheldon and Sallot (2008), which showed how an acceptance strategy was more favorable for a public figure with a positive performance history, in contrast with another with a negative performance history. In this line, consumers with a better perception of corporate reputation are also willing to respond to a higher level of sympathy to a company confession (Grappi and Romani, 2015)
Thus, our second set of hypotheses go as follows:
H.2: If an organization adopts an acceptance communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media, its level of credibility will be significantly higher if it’s non-profit than profit.
H.3: If an organization adopts an evasive communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media, its level of credibility will not significantly differ depending of whether it is profit or non-profit.
Methods
Design
The experimental design to follow is a post-test only quasi-experiment in the form of a factorial design (2x2), with factor communication strategy as between-subjects variable (2 levels: evasive strategy and acceptance strategy) and type of organization as between-subjects variable (2 levels, namely: profit organization and non-profit organization)
Sample
Our sample consisted of 124 participants, so that we formed four groups for the four conditions present in our study (profit/evasive, profit/acceptance, profit/evasive and non-profit/acceptance), to which each participant will be randomly assigned. With the
randomization process, we can raise our confidence that the unsystematic variation will remain as small as possible (Bryman, 2012). In order to obtain the number of participants needed, our online survey-embedded experiment was disseminated through different online platforms.
The duration of the questionnaire completion in seconds was analyzed (M = 478.40 seconds, SD = 1138.01). There were no outliers and we did not exclude participants according to this criteria. The majority of participants were from Europe (88.5%), followed by America (5.7%), Asia (4.9%) and Africa (0.8%). In terms of age (M= 26.13, SD= 6.21), 62.3% of respondents are between 18 and 25 years old, 34.4 % are between 26 and 40, 2.5% between 41 and 55 and 0.8% 55 or older. Two outliers were excluded because of their age input, so that our final sample consisted of 122 participants.
The survey-embedded experiment of this study was created with the survey website Qualtrics. The participants were invited to take part of the experiment by the means of email and network sites (Instagram, Linkedin and Facebook). The first page of the survey contained an ethical declaration to be agreed in order to continue with the experiment and a brief
explanation of what it would consist of. Then, each respondent was randomly assigned to one condition and therefore exposed to different stimulus material; acceptance/profit (n= 29), acceptance/non-profit (n= 33), evasive/profit (n= 37), evasive/non-profit (n= 23). After that, a questionnaire composed by nine questions assessing the level of credibility of the
organization, other three for further manipulation checks, and two in order to gather demographic information were presented. After completing the questionnaire, a debriefing was provided consisting of information about the purpose of the study and the fictitious nature of the news articles presented.
Stimulus material
In order to provide the study with a level of ecological validity as high as possible, the stimulus for the four conditions were all designed following the BBC News online layout. The content of the news article was fictitious, which brought the possibility of having total control over the content and, thus, the manipulation that the respondents were exposed to. In this way, it is also possible to ensure that the respondents’ previous attitudes toward certain real
organizations do not bias our results.
With the aim of identifying as clearly as possible whether the organization at stake is profit or non profit, a brief description of the organization’s main goals and functioning was presented right before the article. The two fictitious organizations had the same name; Babel, and they were identified as chain of restaurants and a non-profit organization that provides daily meals for the homeless at soup kitchens, respectively. Thus, the stimuli consisted of a fictitious article published by the BBC online portal covering the (fictitious) crisis
experienced by the (fictitious) organization involved. The content of the stimuli was
composed by an image of either a restaurant (for the profit conditions) or a volunteer serving food at soup kitchen (for the non-profit conditions) and a text. The text follows the structure of a typical BBC News online news article and the content covers the events occurred and states whether the organization has given an explanation about the issue or not, depending of whether it is included in the acceptance or evasive strategy, respectively. As the object of this piece of research is to understand the different audience’s attitudes towards the organization in crisis, a high level of responsibility attribution is needed in order to ensure that the
organizational strategies applied are one of the main causes of the participants’ responses. The type of crisis with the highest level of responsibility attribution is that provoked by an internal cause (Brown & White, 2010), so that a crisis communication caused by an internal issue (food poisoning) was the main topic covered in the articles. Examples of the stimuli can be found in appendix A, B, C and D.
Pre-test
A pre-test was conducted to ensure that the experimental stimuli would provoke the anticipated effects in terms of communication strategy and type of organization. In the pre-test, 32 participants representing six different countries (40% Spain, 20% Netherlands, 20% Italy, 10% Germany, and 5% of each the UK and Canada) were exposed to one of four news articles (acceptance/profit, evasive/profit, acceptance/non-profit, evasive/non-profit). After looking at the articles, participants answered to the following questions: 1) What is this news story about?: A) Food Poisoning, B) Rudeness of Staff; 2) What type of organization is
Babel?: A) Profit, B) Non-profit; and 3) Has Babel given an explanation about the issue?: A) Yes, B) No. Looking at the descriptives, it was confirmed that the topic of the news article was clear, as a 98% of the participants answered correctly about the first question. The
correctly according to the stimulus they were exposed to. However, a 28% of the participants did not give a correct answer to the third question. Concretely, only a 42% of those
participants exposed to the two stimulus materials containing an acceptance strategy answered correctly. This led to the idea that the stimulus material was not clear enough. For this reason, for the creation of the final stimulus materials to be applied for the final study, the title of the news articles of the acceptance strategy were changed so that it was clear that the organization took responsibility for the issue. Also the paragraphs of the articles were redistributed so the information expressing the organization’s strategy occupied a more relevant space.
Dependent variable
Credibility was measured by the means of nine seven-point Likert scale items created
for the purpose of this study: this organization cares about the public interest; this organization only cares about its own interests; this organization takes care of its
clients/beneficiaries; this organization will fulfill its promises; this organization will work to fulfill its promises; this organization is honest; this organization has a sufficient experience on its field; this organization has the tools to do its job well; this organization provides its clients/beneficiaries with a high quality service.
Before computing a new credibility variable, a factor analysis was conducted in order to find out if the group of variables previously mentioned forms one main latent construct. The KMO (=.85) and the Barlett’s test of Sphericity (=.00) showed that our sample size was large and, thus, reliable enough to conduct a factor analysis. The rotation process selected is Oblimin, as we expected the factors to be correlated with each other. The values taken into account were those with an absolute value above .30. The factor analysis showed that the items form a two-dimensional scale. There were two factors with an Eigenvalue higher than 1 (values 4.52 and 1.23). The scree plot also showed that there was one factor before the point of inflexion. Looking at the factor matrix, we observed that indeed there were two factors,
falling all items at a higher extent on the first one. Nevertheless, the reliability of the scale was good, Cronbach's alpha = .86, so that excluding items was not necessary and all of them were used to compute the credibility variable (M= 4.39, SD= 1.05).
Manipulation checks
For the manipulation and randomization checks, the variable Condition was recoded into two binominal new variables: type of organization and strategy. Two manipulation checks were therefore conducted in order to understand if our stimulus material reflected the manipulation intended. The first cross-tabulation showed that participants in the acceptance strategy condition differed significantly from participants in the evasive strategy condition on whether they believed that the organization they were exposed to had taken responsibility for the incident presented on the news article, χ2 (3, N = 122) = 66.41, p < .05. Thus, we can consider the manipulation as successful.
Following the same procedure, a second cross-tabulation showed that participants in non-profit organization condition differed significantly from participants in the profit-evasive condition on whether they thought the organization presented in the news article was profit or non-profit, χ2 (3, N = 122) = 96.43, p < .05. Thus, we can consider the manipulation as successful.
Randomization checks
Before testing the hypotheses, certain demographic variables were examined to determine if they were equally distributed among the four conditions. The variables tested are age and nationality.
For the analysis of the variable age, a new variable was computed, consisting of 4 categories (18-25, 26-40, 41-55, 55 or older). To check whether the number of participants of each age category was equally distributed among the four conditions, a crosstabulation was created. The Chi Square results were not significant: χ2 (9, n = 122) = 8.28, p = .506, so that
we can assume the randomization was successful in terms of age so that it does not affect our final results.
For the analysis of the nationality, a new variable was also computed, consisting of 4 categories (Europe, America, Africa and Asia). To check whether the number of participants of each age category was equally distributed among the four conditions, a crosstabulation was also created. The Chi Square results were not significant: χ2 (9, n = 122) = 9.92, p = .357, so that we can assume the randomization was successful in terms of age so that it does not affect our final results.
Results
In order to have an overall review of all possible effects present in our study, a two-way analysis of variance was conducted so that we can determine either the main effects of communication strategy on the perceived level of organizational credibility.
For the analysis of credibility, we used the variable that was previously recoded for the randomization checks after computing the 9 items presented to our respondents in the form of survey questions.
Before checking these observations, we observed that the Levene’s test for the assumption of equal variances is not significant and equal variances can be assumed, F(3, 118)= 0.43, p = .73.
After conducting the two-way ANOVA, found a significant main effect of
communication strategy on the level of organizational credibility perceived F(1, 118) = 40.75, p < .001, η2 = 0.03. Therefore, participants exposed to an acceptance communication
strategy (M= 4.94, SD= .83) scored higher than those exposed to an evasive one (M=3.83, SD= .95). Thus, our hypotheses H1 and H1.2 can be confirmed and we can assume that organizations that adopt an acceptance communication strategy in the context of a crisis
communication reported by the media will obtain a significantly higher level of credibility than those adopting an evasive strategy.
Furthermore, a main effect of type of organization in credibility was found F(1, 118) = 8.95, p < .001, η2 = 0.02 and participants exposed to a non-profit organization (M= 4.73, SD= 1.02) presented higher credibility scores than those exposed to a profit one (M= 4.11, SD= .99) .
Our second and third hypotheses aimed to investigate possible differences between respondents exposed to a profit or non-profit organization within the two strategies
(acceptance vs evasive), respectively. For this purpose, the variable condition (evasive/profit, acceptance/profit, evasive/non-profit and acceptance/non-profit) was taken as our independent variable.
After conducting a one-way analysis of variance, participants within the
acceptance/non-profit condition (M= 5.10, SD= 0.88) were found to score higher than those within the acceptance/profit one (M= 4.76, SD= .74). However, Bonferroni post-hoc test revealed no significant differences (p= .811). Therefore, it cannot be confirmed that an organization that adopts an acceptance communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the media will obtain a significantly higher level of credibility if it’s non-profit than profit and our second hypothesis (H2) should be rejected.
Participants within the evasive/non-profit condition (M= 4.22, SD= .99) scored higher than those within the evasive/profit (M= 3.59, SD= .86) as well. In this case, the difference between respondents exposed to an evasive strategy applied by a non-profit organization and an evasive strategy applied by a profit one was found significant (p= .047), which contradicts our third hypothesis (H3) and we cannot therefore confirm that an organization that adopts an evasive communication strategy in the context of a crisis communication reported by the
media will not obtain a significantly different level of credibility depending of whether it is profit or non-profit.
Conclusion and Discussion
The aim of this study was to investigate the different effects of an evasive versus acceptance communication strategy in organizational credibility within the context of a crisis communication disseminated by the media. Possible significant differences in the level of credibility scored by respondents exposed to a profit and non-profit organization were also taking into account.
It was hypothesized that organizations that adopt an acceptance communication strategy as a response of information disseminated on the media about a crisis communication would lead to a higher level of credibility perceived than those adopting an evasive one. Therefore, the results of the study support the expected effects. These results go in line with previous research on crisis communication strategies (Lee, 2009; Grappi & Romani, 2015 ). Taking into account possible effects of type of organization, it was hypothesized that non-profit organizations would obtain significantly higher credibility scores when applying an acceptance communication strategy within the context of a crisis disseminated by the media than profit ones; whereas organizations would not obtain significantly higher credibility scores when applying an evasive communication strategy within the context of a crisis disseminated by the media whether they are profit or non-profit.
When applying an acceptance strategy, the credibility level obtained by a non-profit organization was higher than the profit one. However, this effect was found non-significant and therefore our second hypothesis could not be confirmed. This might be explained by the power that an apologetical response may have in mitigating the reputation threat caused by the crisis itself (Ma & Zhan, 2016). Thus, the acceptance strategy might reduce the
reputational damage, decreasing the difference in credibility levels between a profit and a non-profit organization.
When applying an evasive strategy, the credibility level obtained by a non-profit organization was found significantly higher than the profit one. These results, along with those checking the same effects within an acceptance condition, shed light on the power of non-profit organizations in terms of trust. Against our initial predictions, non-profit
organizations score higher within the two different communication strategies applied. These findings go in line with the main effect of type of organization found as well within this research. The significant difference of credibility levels between participants exposed to a profit and non profit organization found support in studies by Lishner, Batson and Huss (2011) that confirm the importance of previous reputational levels in times of crisis. Thus, the general higher level of trust owned by non-profit organizations (Maragia, 2002) may serve as a protector against post-crisis damage. Following this trend, studies by Niezink et al. (2012) found previous reputation to have a similar impact in repairing reputational damage after a crisis than response strategies. A first step to understand this differences may fall upon motivated reasoning theory (Kunda, 1990): besides the strategy applied, audiences tend to rationalize those thoughts that are more favorable to their previous believes (Kunda, 1990) and consequently show a higher level of credibility towards those organizations they already trust at a higher extent.
However, as stated before, the difference of credibility scores between respondents in the profit and non-profit groups was only significant for those exposed to an evasive
communication strategy. These results suggest that the negative effect of the adoption of an evasive strategy may be stronger than the positive effect of an acceptance one. Prior research shows that negative events tend to elicit stronger emotional, behavioural and cognitive
This phenomenon is identified as “negativity bias”, and defines a general
predisposition to give greater weight to negative entities (Rozin, & Royzman, 2001). Thus, the activation of motivated reasoning mechanisms for audiences facing a crisis
communication may be stronger when associating previous negative perceptions of a (profit) organization with negative emotions stemmed from an evasive strategy choice than associated same inputs of a positive nature.
Limitations
A few limitations of the study should be mentioned. First, the use of a convenience sample presents potential problems regarding external validity (Bryman, 2012). This sampling strategy was the most suitable due to the time and resources available for the conducting of the experiment. However, the sample may not be an accurate representation of the population. Concretely, 62.3% of the respondents were younger than 25 years old, which may affect the results of the research due to the differences that participants within this age range could present in terms of non-profit organizations’ trust, in comparison to older generations. Another limitation of the study is the lack of information about the participants’ gender due to problems with the functioning of the platform chosen for the completion of the survey. Thus, it is not possible to find out whether there are potential influences in the results due to the gender distribution. Finally, the study may lack of ecological validity due to the use of a fictitious stimulus material. In real life, the credibility of an organization is influenced by multiple factors. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to reach such a high level of control over the independent variables by using real organizations, as all the factors affecting their
credibility may make it uncertain if the effects in the attitudes of the population towards them are caused by our manipulation or not.
The results obtained via survey-embedded experiment measuring the effects of communication strategy and type of organization in organizational credibility in times of crisis provide important implications for crisis communication theory.
Although the results provide useful insights, additionally research is necessary to grow the field. Due to the scope of this paper, only two communication strategies were studied. To deepen within this field, it would be of great interest to compare different acceptance
strategies (apologetical versus non apologetical, etc). Another source of improvement would the replication of this study using real organizations so that it would be possible to measure their level of credibility both before and after the manipulation.
Practical implications
As previous literature on Situational Crisis Communication suggest (Coombs, 2006), corporate communication practitioners should acknowledge the necessity of providing an elaborated response to tackle publics’ reactions to a crisis. On the contrary, adopting an evasive or non-response strategy may lead to a higher damage within the credibility of the organization. The second main practical contribution of this study falls on the importance of previous reputation on post-crisis effects. In line with previous studies on organizational trust(Grappi & Romani, 2015) organizations with a higher reputation (non-profit) are found to suffer less after a crisis than those with a lower reputation (profit). For this, corporate
communication specialists should not overestimate the power of post-crisis communication strategies and acknowledge the necessity of joining forces towards reputation-building strategies that may serve as a protector for future crises.
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Appendices
