Employee Mistreatment Crises and Company Perceptions

Authors

  • Seoyeon Kim University of Alabama
  • Lucinda L. Austin University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Keywords:

corporate social responsibility, crisis, employee mistreatment, corporate reputation

Abstract

This study aimed to provide empirical support to the removal of challenge crisis from the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). Authors examined consumer responses to two accidental crisis types identified in traditional SCCT: a challenge crisis (failure in corporate ethics) and a technical-error crisis (failure in business performance). Specifically, how crisis types within the same crisis cluster varied in consumer outcomes when the crisis involved consumer challenges against the firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) was explored. Findings from an experiment with crisis cases in multiple industries revealed: compared with technical-error crises, CSR-involved challenge crises yielded higher crisis responsibility, more negative corporate reputation, and higher intentions to take retaliatory actions against the company. Perceived corporate expertise in providing quality products/services was rated moderately low and not significantly different across crisis types.

Author Biographies

Seoyeon Kim, University of Alabama

Seoyeon Kim (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Assistant Professor of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on public relations, corporate social responsibility communication, and crisis communication. She has past professional experience as a senior account executive at Enzaim Health, a public relations/health communication consulting firm in South Korea.

Lucinda L. Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Lucinda Austin (Ph.D., University of Maryland) is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA. She researches social media, health, crisis, and CSR communication. She is published in leading communication and public relations journals. Past professional experience includes the Center of Risk Communication Research at the University of Maryland, and ICF International for Federal government and nonprofits, including CDC, HHS, FEMA, and Red Cross. Austin has been awarded AEJMC's Promising Professors and PR Division SuPRstar Awards, Arthur W. Page Center's Legacy Scholar Awards, and NCA's PRIDE Award. She is co-editor of the 2017 Routledge book Social Media and Crisis Communication.

Downloads

Published

2020-11-28

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Articles

License

The International Journal of Communication is an academic journal. As such, it is dedicated to the open exchange of information. For this reason, IJoC is freely available to individuals and institutions. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However, commercial use of the IJoC website or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the editor. Authors who publish in The International Journal of Communication will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grants users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) This journal utilizes the LOCKSSsystem to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. The publisher perpetually authorizes participants in the LOCKSS system to archive and restore our publication through the LOCKSS System for the benefit of all LOCKSS System participants. Specifically participating libraries may:
  • Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
  • Use material consistent with original license terms;
  • Provide copies to other LOCKSS appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
 

Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 specifies, in Section 107, the terms of the Fair Use exception: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; &
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. In accord with these provisions, the International Journal of Communication believes in the vigorous assertion and defense of Fair Use by scholars engaged in academic research, teaching and non-commercial publishing. Thus, we view the inclusion of “quotations” from existing print, visual, audio and audio-visual texts to be appropriate examples of Fair Use, as are reproductions of visual images for the purpose of scholarly analysis. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication encourages authors to employ fair use in their scholarly publishing wherever appropriate. Fair use is the right to use unlicensed copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your own work, in some circumstances. We consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication, created by the International Communication Association and endorsed by the National Communication Association, and you should too. If you have any questions about whether fair use applies to your uses of copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your scholarship, simply include your rationale, grounded in the Best Practices, as a supplementary document with your submission.