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Apologies and Public Relations Crises at Chrysler, Toshiba, and Volvo

This analysis asserts that most crisis management research tends to neglect the communication component of crisis situations. As a corrective, this study suggests that a terminological approach is useful to studying public relations crises, particularly those in which the organization is guilty of wrongdoing and delivers an apology. This study analyzes the corporate apologetic discourses of three paradigmatic case.-at Chrysler, Toshiba, and Volvo-and examines the use of persuasive descriptions and strategic dissociations preferred by these corporate apologists. The author is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northern Illinois University.

Given the terminological nature of crises, crisis management is a form of issue management, in which crisis managers attempt to control the terms used to describe corporate actions. While ultimate determination of guilt or innocence occurs in a courtroom, organizational communicators realize that the court of public opinion adjudicates a verdict that they can ill afford to lose. With increasing frequency, corporations publicly respond to charges of wrongdoing with justifications of their actions. Corporations like Chrysler, Toshiba, and Volvo that take their case directly to the public find that they may still face legal sanctions for their wrongdoing. A federal judge eventually found Chrysler guilty of 15 counts of mail fraud and ordered the company to pay $7.6 million in criminal fines. Toshiba faced penalties on two fronts. The Japanese government banned the Toshiba Machine Company from exporting to Eastern block countries for one year, a penalty that resulted in a loss to Toshiba Machine of $1.3 million (compared with a $5.7 million profit the year before). A year later, Congress banned for three years the sale of Toshiba Machine Company products in the U.S. This decision was milder than initial calls to ban all Toshiba products for three-to-five years. Volvo, in a settlement with Texas Attorney General Mattox, issued the advertisements analyzed here and reimbursed the State $316,250 in “investigative costs.“  In addition, the FTC fined Volvo and its advertising agency $150,000 each. It appears that the primary benefit of apologetic advertisements is that they are public statements of contrition that complete the ritualistic cycle of transgression and absolution. In so functioning, apologize deprive journalists of a continuing story and, thus, limit the damage done to corporate images. The presentation of an apologia is indeed a difficult communication maneuver. This analysis illumines how corporations attempt to use this discourse of defense, known as apologia, to manage public relations crises for which they bear primary responsibility. Consequently, I have shown that, as it relates to the construction and delivery of apologize, organizations attempt to provide a competing interpretation of the act. In so doing, they label their wrongdoing in a way that displays sorrow but limits culpability, and use dissociations to distance themselves from the wrong doing.

Hearit, K. M. (1994). Apologies and public relations crises at chrysler, toshiba, and Volvo: Public Relations Review, 20(2):113-125

Attribution Theory as a guide for post-crisis communication research

The field of crisis communication is poised to take the next in its evolution. Now is the time to move beyond the limits of the case study methods that shape the field’s development and shift to empirical methods. As the field matures, crisis managers need recommendations that are based on scientifically tested evidence rather than speculation. The argument for scientifically tested evidence for action is based on the evidence-based in management and medicine. This article discusses the role Attribution Theory has played and can continue to play in building scientifically tested evidence for crisis managers as well as providing an integrative mechanism for the diverse crisis research that spans a variety of disciplines. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Post-crisis communication, what management says and does after a crisis, is a robust area of research in communication and management. While prolific, the post-crisis communication research is often disjointed and a theoretical. Much of the extant writings consist of lists of what “to do” and what“ not to do” drawn from case studies. Moreover, the case studies tend to be based on mediated accounts of the crisis and do not involve interviews with those involved in the crisis. What is underrepresented are theory-based studies designed to systematically identify and model the key variables in post-crisis communication. We “know” little about how people react to crises or crisis responses given the lack of experimental study of the phenomenon (Ahluwalia, Burnkrant, & Unnava, 2000; Dawar & Pillutla,2000;Dean,2004;Seeger,Sellnow,&Ulmer,1998). What we need in crisis communication is a shift towards evidence-based management, the use of scientific evidence to guide managerial decision-making (Rousseau, 2005). In communication-based crisis research, we have an over abundance of rhetorical studies that attempt to use descriptive data to claim issues of causality and theory building. There are also problems in preoccupations with finding “genres” in crisis communication that contribute little to theory development and testing. Apologia was a gateway for many into crisis communication. It was useful to think of organizations using communication to protect their public personas/reputations and provided a wealth of resources for developing crisis response strategies (Hearit, 2006). But that does not mean the genre should be the focal point of crisis communication. Some researchers seem Benton finding a new genre in every new crisis. Every crisis does have unique features. However, is it right to have a genre of one? Is not genre to be based on a pattern emerging from a number of works? Furthermore, of what value is discovering another genre of crisis communication? While avaluable start for crisis communication, we seemed to have exhausted they ieldsfromapologia. Postrisis communication research can offer greater value to theory and practitioner sift here is a grander picture that can unite and integrate the various “genres” in to usable applied knowledge. Rhetorical cases’ studies provided the roots for the study of crisis communication in the communication field. It awakened us to the need to focus on what organizations say and do as well keyed us to the value of the situation in influencing crisis responses. However, the time has come to embrace the evolution of the field and influx of empirical studies of crisis communication (e.g., Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005; Dean, 2004; Huang, Lin, & Su, 2005). Crisis communication research should adopt the perspective of evidence-based management. This piece argues that Attribution Theory provides one useful beacon for this evolutionary track.

Post-crisis communication research should continue along its newer, empirical track. Such research is providing tested results to crisis managers rather than speculation based on case studies. We move away from decisions based on unsystematic data toward evidence-based decisions. Attribution Theory is an historical and still viable theory for integrating crisis communication research. A common theoretical link allows for the integration of research from various researchers in diverse fields. We begin to build up on one another’s work and see how the pieces can begin to be integrated into a larger whole. Moreover, there is a broad research agenda to pursue based upon Attribution Theory. A partial list would include application of fundamental attribution error to crises and implications for crisis communication, the ability of crisis response strategies to shape perceptions of the crisis frames, how crisis response strategies can trigger the discounting principle, and relationship of crisis frames to counter-factual thinking. With Attribution Theory as a connecting point, diverse streams of research can converge into to a river of post-crisis communication knowledge that provides a mechanism for evidence-based crisis communication.

Coombs, W. T. (2007). Attribution Theory as a guide for post-crisis communication research: Public Relations Review, 33: 35–139