Preparing for the inevitable: Strategically navigating negative publicity in the contemporary business landscape

Asheen Heranga Hettiarachchi Maha Hettiarachchige, Francesca Cabiddu and Ludovica Moi

Business Horizons, 2025, vol. 68, issue 2, 139-151

Abstract: In the contemporary business landscape, the effective management of negative publicity stands as a critical challenge for organizations seeking sustained success. This prompts a crucial inquiry: How should firms handle different instances of negative publicity? This article presents a strategic and comprehensive review of existing approaches to navigating the complexities of negative publicity. While not rooted in an empirical study, this work contributes to the literature through a systematic literature review encompassing 63 peer-reviewed journal publications spanning from 2008 to 2022. We find that effective management of negative publicity depends on a dual-focused strategy. On the one hand, firms must deploy proactive measures to prevent the effects of a negative event; on the other hand, they need to enact strategies to promptly respond to a negative event once it transpires. Therefore, we propose a framework capturing the pre- and post-negative-publicity strategies that firms can adopt in situation-specific contexts. Within this framework, we establish connections between these strategies and two types of negative publicity (value-based and performance-based), along with the sources of negative publicity situations, identifying customers, employees, and the company itself as critical triggers.

Keywords: Negative publicity; Corporate reputation; Reputation management; Brand perception; Corporate apologies; Transparency and disclosure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:68:y:2025:i:2:p:139-151

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2024.10.010

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