Organizational Sensemaking of Non-ethical Consumer Behavior: Case Study of a French Mutual Insurance Company

Bernard Cova (), Gerald Gaglio (), Juliette Weber () and Philippe Chanial ()
Additional contact information
Bernard Cova: KEDGE Business School Marseille
Gerald Gaglio: Université de Technologie de Troyes
Juliette Weber: Macif
Philippe Chanial: Université Paris Dauphine

Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, vol. 148, issue 4, No 5, 783-799

Abstract: Abstract Researchers and managers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the topic of unethical consumer behavior. Where most studies view unethical behavior as something that is identifiable per se, the authors of the present article believe that it only exists because it has been constructed by people operating within a specific context. Hence the efforts made by this paper to explore, at the level of one specific organization, how interactions between employees and consumers might lead to the construct of unethical consumers. Based on a case study of France’s AMDM—a mutual insurance company set up to serve a client base comprising motorcyclists—the paper addresses how one group of consumers ends up being categorized as unethical by revealing the existence of a sensemaking process within the target organization. This process develops in three main phases: the nurturing of a shared ethos; the protection of employees’ recognized status; and the demonization of any group of consumers threatening this status. Managers incorporating this sensemaking process can avoid or mitigate the negative effects befalling organizations when these kinds of unethical consumer behavior are constructed.

Keywords: Biker; Demonization; Ethos; Insurance; Recognition; Scooterist; Sensemaking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-016-3102-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:148:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-016-3102-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3102-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().