Corporate Reputation and Collective Crises: A Theoretical Development Using the Case of Rana Plaza

Breeda Comyns () and Elizabeth Franklin-Johnson ()
Additional contact information
Breeda Comyns: Kedge Business School
Elizabeth Franklin-Johnson: Kedge Business School

Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, vol. 150, issue 1, No 10, 159-183

Abstract: Abstract Banking scandals, accounting fraud, product recalls, and environmental disasters, their associated reputational effects as well as company response strategies have been well reported in the literature. Reported crises and scandals typically involve one focal company for example BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. As business practices change and company supply chains become more complex and interlinked, there is a greater risk of collective crises where multiple companies are associated with the same scandal. We argue that companies are likely to behave differently in a group setting compared to when faced with a crisis individually. Using an inductive approach, we examine the case of the Rana Plaza building collapse. We find that organizations with a history of similar crises adopt defensive strategies and communicate much later compared to organizations which adopt accommodative strategies. Contrary to the individual case, in a collective crisis accommodative strategies result in more negative reputational damage and a higher burden of responsibility. We propose that the relationship between crisis response strategy and organization reputation is moderated by the crisis setting. We extend the logic of crisis management and corporate reputation to incorporate the case of a collective crisis.

Keywords: Collective crisis; Corporate social responsibility; Corporate reputation; Crisis management; Rana Plaza; Situational crisis communication theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-016-3160-4 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:150:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-016-3160-4

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3160-4

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 ().