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Corporate Apologia: Organizational Self-defence in a Crisis
Edited by W. Timothy Coombs, Finn Frandsen, Sherry J. Holladay, Winni Johansen
Corporations face a myriad of potential crises each day including explosions/fires, harmful products, workplace violence, and management misconduct. As experts note, crises are a matter of "when" and not "if" in corporate life. Even with active prevention programs, crises will happen. Managers, then, must be ready to respond to the crises they cannot prevent. A crisis response, what management says and does after a crisis, is essentially communicative. A crisis response can either improve or make the crisis situation worse for a corporation and its various stakeholders.
The first priority in any crisis should be stakeholder safety. Every effort must be taken to prevent harm to people. Once safety is addressed, the crisis response shifts to issues of reputational repair. A corporate reputation is a valuable asset ([21] Fombrun and van Riel, 2004). A crisis is a threat to the corporate reputation and crisis communication (crisis response) can be an integral part of repairing that harm/protecting the reputational assets ([4] Barton, 2001; [5] Benoit, 1995). Corporate apologia is the pivotal point around which crisis communication research developed. In general, corporate apologia is a communicative effort to defend the corporation against reputation/character attacks. Corporate apologia is a natural fit with crisis communication because a crisis threats (attacks) the corporate reputation thereby calling forth a defense. Because of the historical ties to corporate apologia, this special issue on crisis communication was constructed around the concept. However, we expanded corporate apologia to include any crisis response strategies designed to protect a corporate after a crisis, not just those communicative strategies found in traditional corporate apologia.
This introductory article traces the development of crisis communication by examining the evolution of corporate apologia, the expansion of crisis communication to perspectives beyond apologia, and the value of crisis communication to a corporation. Regardless of the research tradition or methods utilized, there is consistent connection to apologia. This paper provides a foundation that reviews what we know about crisis communication and where we might go next. The paper within this special issue provide new insights as they push forward with research thereby adding to our knowledge of what constitutes effective crisis communication.
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