Search results

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

The purpose of this paper is to provide managers with insights to help survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. Given the environment at the time of this paper, this paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis like COVID-19.

The authors offer a conceptual framework, grounded in the attribution theory and situation crisis communication theory (SCCT), for managers to use when determining which crisis response strategy is most appropriate to use during a crisis. Propositions based on this framework are provided. This paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the framework proposed for organizational crisis response strategy and recovery, several insights for managers across a variety of industries emerge. Consideration of the best strategic approach to a crisis is essential, and time is critical. This framework provides a starting point for creating a proper response strategy when a crisis arises that is not within the organization’s crisis management planning. Managerial implications for several industries, such as restaurant, hotel, airline, education, retail, medical and other professional services, and theoretical implications to further the advancement of understanding are provided.

The findings of this paper demonstrate that organizations that apply an accommodative strategy during unintentional crises will survive, while during intentional crises, they will thrive in the marketplace. Similarly, organizations that apply an offensive strategy during unintentional crises will thrive, while during intentional crises, they will survive in the marketplace.

This paper provides a framework highlighting strategies that best protect an organization during both internally and externally caused crises. The response strategy and crisis framework are based on the attribution theory and SCCT. Building on this framework, six propositions are postulated. In keeping with this strategy and crisis framework, this study provides several crisis response insights for managers across a variety of industries. These suggestions act as a guide for managers when assessing how to respond in the early days of a crisis and what to do to recover from it.

This paper provides a crisis-strategy matrix, grounded in the attribution theory and SCCT, to provide decision-making guidance to help managers survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. The authors provide multiple industry insights related to the “how to” and the “what to” in the recovery from and survival through internally and externally caused crises.

The purpose of the chapter is to compare social and economic effects that accompany crises of economic systems.

According to the adopted classification of causes of conflicts of socio-economic systems, the indicators that reflect potential social and economic causes of crisis are determined. Regression analysis is performed, and multiple regression dependence of economic growth of Russia’s economic system (values of growth of GDP in constant prices) on the indicators that characterize social and economic causes of crisis is determined; correlation analysis is performed and correlation of each indicator of causes and the indicator of economic growth is determined.

It is shown by the example of modern Russia that subjective (social factors) have the key role in determining cyclic fluctuations of economic system – together with objective (economic effects). Social causes of crisis are almost as important as economic causes. In view of generally acknowledged social consequences of crises (growth of inflation and unemployment level), it is possible to state a relatively equal role of economic and social effects that accompany crises of economic systems. The information and empirical basis of the chapter consists of the statistical materials of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the OECD. The research is performed by the example of modern Russia’s economic system; its timeframe covers 1999–2018 (recent 20 years).

The obtained conclusions show the necessity and open perspectives for specifying the existing theory of cycles in the aspect of inclusion of social effects into the model of cyclic (wave) fluctuations of economic systems.

Crisis managers believe in the value of a favorable, pre‐crisis reputation. The prior reputation can create a halo effect that protects an organization during a crisis. The prior reputation/halo might work as a shield that deflects the potential reputational damage from a crisis. Or the prior reputation/halo might encourage stakeholders to give the organization the benefit of the doubt in the crisis (reduce attributions of crisis responsibility). Oddly, researchers have had little luck in producing a halo effect for prior reputation in crisis situations. The purpose of this paper is to present two studies designed to test if the halo effect could occur and which of the two dynamics of the prior reputation halo best serve to explain the benefits of a favorable, pre‐crisis reputation.

The research focuses on a set of studies conducted to illustrate the halo effect and to explore how it serves to protect an organization during a crisis. The implications of the findings for post‐crisis communication are discussed.

The halo effect for prior reputation in crisis was created. The halo operated in a limited range for organizations with very favorable prior reputations. The data also supported the halo as shield dynamic rather than the halo as benefit of the doubt.

The paper provides insight into the area of reputation and crisis management.

This chapter enquires into the contribution of two British writers, Herbert Somerton Foxwell and Henry Riverdale Grenfell, who elaborated upon the hints provided by Jevons towards a description of long waves in the oscillations of prices. Writing two decades after Jevons, they witnessed the era of high prices turning into the great depression of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the causes of which they saw in the end of bimetallism. Not only did they take up Jevons’s specific explanation of the long fluctuations, but they also based their discussion upon graphical representation of data and incorporated in their treatment a specific trait (the superposition principle) of the ‘waves’ metaphor emphasized by the Manchester statisticians in the 1850s and 1860s. Their contribution is also interesting for their understanding of crises versus depressions at the time of the emergence of the interpretation of oscillations as a cycle, which they have only partially grasped – as distinct from the approach of later long wave theorists.

The purpose of this paper is to use an attributional approach to examine press coverage in Germany dealing with Toyota’s 2010 global product recall due to purportedly defective brakes. The research focuses on the attributions of cause and responsibility and, thereby, the practices of media-brokered selection and interpretation of events.

The methodology used is a quantitative content analysis of selected German print media. Corporate reporting is analysed with the help of attribution theory approaches from the field of psychology, which, when applied to public relations themes, thereby enables the identification of latent and manifest risk factors that emerge from the perceived responsibility of the media.

Causal attributions are an essential aspect of coverage in acute crisis situations. The key findings show a dominance of internal attributions of responsibility in which the media interprets the crisis as self inflicted and ascribes a high level of fault on the company. Exonerating attributions according to a self-serving bias find little resonance in the coverage. The responsibility attributed to Toyota by the media coverage to a sustained damage to the company’s reputation.

The study demonstrates that attribution theory can be productively applied to questions of communication management. This approach enables an analysis of attribution discourse as well as the potential long-term effects on the company’s reputation. Thus, the original value of this study lies in the psychological foundation of organisational risk and opportunity.

Using as many perspectives as possible to understand large-scale industrial crises can be a daunting task. This paper aims to demonstrate a reasonably complex yet systemic, analytical and critical approach to analyzing what causes crises.

The authors use a multi-perspective methodology within which each perspective uses a substantially different ontology and epistemology, offering a deeper understanding of the causes of large-scale crises. The methodology utilizes extant theory and findings, archival data from English and Japanese sources, including narratives of focal people such as Toyota President Akio Toyoda.

The analysis suggests that what caused Toyota’s crisis was not just Toyota’s failure to solve its technical problems. It was Toyota’s collective myopia, interactively complex new technologies and misunderstanding of corporate citizenship.

The authors argue that crises are complex situations best understood from multiple perspectives and that easily observable aspects of crises are often not the most significant causes of crises. In most cases, causes of crises are hidden and taken-for-granted assumptions of managers. Thus, managers must view crises critically from multiple yet distinct viewpoints.

The authors use Alpaslan and Mitroff’s multi-disciplinary methodology to outline several critical perspectives on Toyota’s messy recall crisis.

The purpose of the work is to determine the signs of conflicts in social effects of crises of economic systems and to determine perspectives of studying crises on the basis of the concept of economic conflicts.

For determining the signs of conflicts in social effects of crises of economic systems, this work uses the method of qualitative break-even analysis, the methods of systemic, problem, and structural and functional analysis, and the method of formalization (table presentation of authors’ conclusions).

It is substantiated that social causes and social manifestations and consequences of crises of economic systems have signs of conflicts – violation of balance of socio-economic phenomena and processes and the following negative reaction of economic subjects. Causal connections of distribution of conflicts within social effects of crises of economic systems are determined and a preferable method of their regulation is offered.

A new method of state regulation of socio-economic system for overcoming its crisis and crisis management is offered. An advantage and essential difference of this method from the traditional one is influence on social cause of crisis (not on its economic and social consequences), due to which it is possible to quickly overcome the crisis and reduce the risk of its renewal.

The purpose of this research is to describe organization members' attributions for managerial responses to obviously externally caused crises. The authors draw from attribution theory research and the actor-observer bias to argue that organization members' proximity to managerial crisis response is a key determinant of organization members' affective and behavioral outcomes following a crisis.

The authors develop a conceptual dual-process model of attributions that explains why organization members' judgments of managerial responsibility and associated outcomes differ depending on organization members' proximity to crisis response action.

The authors focus on organization members' attributions for the failure of managerial crisis responses to obviously externally caused crisis events. The authors present propositions regarding the impact of organization members' potential biases on their attributions for managerial crisis response. Then, the authors delineate how action proximity can assuage negative outcomes of managerial crisis response failure by encouraging an attitude of understanding and awareness of situational challenges.

The authors diverge from prior applications of attribution theory to crisis management by focusing on organization members' attributions of managerial crisis response failure, rather than attributions for the initial cause of the crisis itself. The authors also extend prior work that primarily focuses on crisis response strategies by instead elaborating on how organization members' attributions operate in the wake of their management's failure to effectively respond to an obviously externally caused crisis.

The symptoms that precede crises are utterly undistinguishable from the signs of great prosperity; ventures and speculations of all sorts proliferate; the price of products, the value of land and houses rise; the demand for labor increases and wage rates augment, interest on the contrary diminishes. Add to that a gullible public – whose doubts vanish at the sight of the first successful undertaking – and a taste for gambling, which spreads as prices continue to rise and as the hope of becoming rich in a short time takes hold of people's imagination. Finally, increasing luxury leads to excess spending, fueled less by greater income than by the higher value of capital estimated at market prices.