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Article
Publication date: 18 December 2020

Martin Carlsson-Wall, Adrian Iredahl, Kalle Kraus and Mats Wiklund

This paper aims to explore the role of management controls in managing heterogeneous interests during extreme situations.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the role of management controls in managing heterogeneous interests during extreme situations.

Design/methodology/approach

Through interviews and observations, the authors analyse the Swedish Migration Agency’s management controls and study routines during the peak of the European Migrant Crisis.

Findings

Prior to the crisis, the strategy used by the employees was to mediate between two interests (labelled legal security and empathy) to create a workable compromise. During the crisis, however, the authors observed filtering in the form of the previous hierarchical ordering of interests was further strengthened as the employees increasingly relied on just a single interest (the interest which they previously had deemed to be the most important) at the expense of the other interest. The findings suggest that behavioural and social controls helped such filtering; social controls helped certain employees to filter the empathy interest as more important during extreme situations and behavioural controls helped other employees to filter the legal security interest as more important. This help us explain why the authors observe less mediation between the two heterogeneous interests and rather a stricter dominance of one of the interests. The authors also illustrate how especially behavioural controls may become unsupportive of the operations during extreme situations as it consisted of rule-based standards, built to cope with “normal” situations. The heterogeneous interests affected the probability of actors, at times, ignoring behavioural controls when such controls were unsupportive. Actors whose day-to-day operations were mainly guided by the legal security interest remained tightly coupled to behavioural controls even when they felt that these controls were no longer useful. On the other hand, actors who were mainly guided by the empathy interest ignored behavioural controls when they felt that they were unsupportive.

Research limitations/implications

The authors acknowledge that bias might arise from the reliance on retrospective views of past processes and events, which the authors primarily gathered through interviews.

Practical implications

The authors highlight an important relationship between heterogeneous interests (i.e. legal security and empathy) and management controls during the crisis and how this relationship can lead actors to fundamentally different actions.

Originality/value

The two bodies of study on the role of management controls in managing heterogeneous interests and the role of management controls during the crisis have been largely unconnected and it is in this intersection that this study contributes.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 18 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 April 2022

Sunil Budhiraja and Neerpal Rathi

The study aims to examine the association between learning culture and adaptive performance of delivery employees during crises situation. The study develops and tests a model…

Abstract

Purpose

The study aims to examine the association between learning culture and adaptive performance of delivery employees during crises situation. The study develops and tests a model that explains how learning culture, through change-efficacy and meaningful work, influences employees' adaptive performance (including how they handle crisis situations and deal with uncertainty).

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected from 298 delivery employees working in e-commerce companies throughout India in a time-lagged manner. Regression analysis and structural equation modeling were performed to assess the influence of learning culture, change-efficacy and meaningful work on adaptive performance using SPSS 24. Further, PROCESS macro was used to test the parallel mediation effects through bootstrapping approach.

Findings

The study establishes a significant direct and indirect relationship between learning culture and adaptive performance for employees. Further, underpinning the transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1997), and job characteristics theory (1976), this study came across two pathways for organizations to transform their learning efforts into improved adaptive performance for employees.

Practical implications

Organizations, particularly in crisis situations, can leverage employees' change-efficacy and meaningful work to connect learning efforts with employees' adaptive performance.

Originality/value

The study contributes significantly to existing theory on transformative learning and job characteristics theory while strengthening the literature on antecedents of employees' adaptive performance, particularly in crises situation.

Details

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 72 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 May 2017

Damir Jugo

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practices of strategic crisis communication of most successful Croatian companies and the perception of these practices from the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practices of strategic crisis communication of most successful Croatian companies and the perception of these practices from the perspective of media. A framework of reactive strategies is applied to determine how Croatian companies from five major industries would communicate during crisis situations and how their communication is interpreted within the media as a group that conveys and presents their behavior and communication to the broader public.

Design/methodology/approach

A quantitative survey among 60 individuals in charge of communications in Croatian companies was conducted to identify which strategies they are likely to use when in crisis situations. In-depth interviews with 20 journalists regularly reporting on these companies were undertaken to determine their perception and experiences regarding how these companies would communicate during crisis situations.

Findings

Croatian companies are likely to communicate un-strategically, passively and without any risk. Journalists see the communication of the companies even more passive and reactive which seriously influences the manner they report about these companies during crisis situations.

Research limitations/implications

Although 60 companies and 20 journalists both represent a significantly representative sample in Croatian terms, the study provides an insight into only Croatian corporate environment. Conducting the research in different surroundings and other countries could provide additional insight. Nevertheless, the analyzed variables that influenced the selection of strategies provide notable insight for drawing conclusions on this subject.

Originality/value

Besides showing how analyzed companies are likely to communicate during crises, this paper provides an insight into the media’s perception of this communication. The research has shown that the media sees their communication as more passive and reactive than it actually is, which implicates a serious need of shift in communication patterns if these companies want to strive to gain mutual understanding and remotely positive attitude from the media during crisis situations.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 June 2021

Beatriz Casais and Lucilene Ribeiro Gomes

This paper focuses on the analysis of fashion blog activity regarding brands under corporate crisis situations and discusses how these opinion leaders may be agents of corporate…

1036

Abstract

Purpose

This paper focuses on the analysis of fashion blog activity regarding brands under corporate crisis situations and discusses how these opinion leaders may be agents of corporate crisis management.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors analyzed four influential Portuguese fashion blogs regarding eight fashion brands that had experienced a corporate crisis situation. In total, five of the selected brands were mentioned in 2.846 posts of blog content, whose discourse was deeply analyzed.

Findings

The absence of express reference to brand crisis suggests that fashion bloggers tend to ignore these crisis events or divert the readers' attention to the brands' more positive aspects. This result opens the discussion whether fashion bloggers downplay corporate crisis in brand equity or whether it expresses strategies of brand crisis communication through digital influencers.

Originality/value

Though social media may be a source of negative word-of-mouth, social media influencers have been considered important partners of corporate crisis communication in particularly challenging times. Many studies have focused on the role of social media influencers in crisis management, but there was a dearth of research on the specific case of blogs. This study contributes to the understanding of fashion bloggers as agents of brand communication, particularly regarding crisis management and their role on brand activation and positive electronic word-of-mouth, even under crisis situations. This contribution paves the way for future research on whether this is a spontaneous phenomenon or the reflection of possible partnerships between companies and fashion bloggers for the management of corporate crisis situations in the context of fashion brands.

Details

Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, vol. 26 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1361-2026

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 June 2017

Anatoli Bourmistrov and Katarina Kaarbøe

The purpose of this paper is to understand how in a situation of a crisis can Management Accounting Systems (MAS) create tensions in attention to information between top and line…

1667

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how in a situation of a crisis can Management Accounting Systems (MAS) create tensions in attention to information between top and line managers.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on a field study.

Findings

The findings based on an attention-based view on organizations demonstrate how change to an MAS introduced to handle the crisis failed to integrate top and line managers’ attention toward the common issues. Tightening of budget control was an expected response in such a situation. However, this change produced rather the opposite result – attention to information articulated by the top and line managers became even more disintegrated. This was visible in terms of different interpretations of both the reasons and the strategy of how to get out of the crisis – this is what we call a tension in attention.

Research limitations/implications

The study is subject to the usual limitations of case-based research.

Practical implications

Implications from the study is that there is a need for caution about how managers move in the beginning of the crisis because the initial response sets a tone and trajectory of the crisis. In practice, this means that sense making processes are important in an early stage of a crisis to avoid tensions in attention between different groups in the organization.

Originality/value

The authors argued that little research has been conducted so far regarding what information managers focus their attention on in organizations under financial distress conditions. The originality is the use of an attention-based view together with organizational psychology to understand this area.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 13 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 January 2009

Frank Dardis and Michel M. Haigh

Image restoration theory has become a dominant paradigm for examining corporate communication in times of crises. However, much insight gleaned from scholarly research in this…

4048

Abstract

Purpose

Image restoration theory has become a dominant paradigm for examining corporate communication in times of crises. However, much insight gleaned from scholarly research in this area remains descriptive – simply recounting how certain corporations or companies communicated during times of crisis – rather than prescriptive. Therefore, to provide more direct guidance to corporations and organizations, this paper offers the first empirical test of Benoit's five image restoration strategies vis‐à‐vis each other simultaneously within the context of a single crisis situation.

Design/methodology/approach

An experimental investigation that measures consumers' reactions to differentially manipulated crisis‐communication messages. Methods of data analysis include ANOVA and post hoc comparisons of means.

Findings

Results indicate that the strategy of reducing the offensiveness of the event consistently led to higher reputation‐related perceptions of a company than did the other four strategies – denial, evasion of responsibility, corrective action, and mortification – when implemented during a product‐harm crisis situation.

Practical implications

Findings have direct implications for corporate communicators and the organizations they represent in developing and implementing crisis‐communication strategies.

Originality/value

This paper offers an original test of all image restoration strategies within the context of a single crisis. In addition to providing clearer guidelines to practitioners, such inquiry also accelerates the transfer of image restoration theory from the realm of retrospection and description to that of prescription and inference.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 November 2019

Ulfet Kutoglu Kuruç and Baruck Opiyo

A number of studies have documented the use and popularity of social networking sites among Millennials and late Millennials, especially in Western countries. However, the usage…

1529

Abstract

Purpose

A number of studies have documented the use and popularity of social networking sites among Millennials and late Millennials, especially in Western countries. However, the usage of these sites by non-Western young adults/late Millennials has just barely begun. Informed by literature and findings of recent research on audience information-seeking behavior and principles governing the usage of social media to obtain and disseminate crisis-related information, the purpose of this paper is to employ survey research to examine how senior PR-track non-Western late Millennial university students use social media to obtain and/or disseminate information on issues they perceived as “crises.”

Design/methodology/approach

A combination of survey research and critical communication methods were used to gather and analyze data from a sample of future non-Western budding PR professionals. Survey research was designed and used to investigate social media use among PR-major students studying at a large State University in the Mediterranean region to probe their perceptions of these media as forums for activism during moments of crisis. Questionnaire was designed to elicit responses on social media use and perceptions on a range of crisis-communication related issues, and their responses on the Likert scale that were later analyzed using the SPSS (version 21) program.

Findings

These future PR professionals appreciated the suitability of social media in disseminating crisis-communication messages. They also highlighted challenges that unethical use of such platforms pose to PR professionals. Social network sites were reported to be the most popular social media platforms used during crisis communication. Even though the respondents widely reported using social media to disseminate information during crisis situations – and answered in the affirmative that the use of social media at such times could positively contribute to social change, they did not consider themselves as activists who actively contribute to fostering of peace and justice.

Originality/value

A number of studies have documented the use of social networking sites among Millennials especially in Western countries. However, the usage of these sites by non-Western late Millennials has just barely begun. This paper attempts to do this. The study explored social media usage by the non-Western late Millennial PR-track university students. Attempts were also made to elicit such PR professionals’ perceptions of whether social media contribute to activist movements and social change during crisis, and whether they physically acted as activist on social media to contribute to the improvement of societal ills, and to bring local/global peace or not.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 25 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2021

Milad Mirbabaie, Stefan Stieglitz and Felix Brünker

The purpose of this study is to investigate communication on Twitter during two unpredicted crises (the Manchester bombings and the Munich shooting) and one natural disaster…

1030

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate communication on Twitter during two unpredicted crises (the Manchester bombings and the Munich shooting) and one natural disaster (Hurricane Harvey). The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of convergence behaviour archetypes during crises.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected Twitter data and analysed approximately 7.5 million relevant cases. The communication was examined using social network analysis techniques and manual content analysis to identify convergence behaviour archetypes (CBAs). The dynamics and development of CBAs over time in crisis communication were also investigated.

Findings

The results revealed the dynamics of influential CBAs emerging in specific stages of a crisis situation. The authors derived a conceptual visualisation of convergence behaviour in social media crisis communication and introduced the terms hidden and visible network-layer to further understanding of the complexity of crisis communication.

Research limitations/implications

The results emphasise the importance of well-prepared emergency management agencies and support the following recommendations: (1) continuous and (2) transparent communication during the crisis event as well as (3) informing the public about central information distributors from the start of the crisis are vital.

Originality/value

The study uncovered the dynamics of crisis-affected behaviour on social media during three cases. It provides a novel perspective that broadens our understanding of complex crisis communication on social media and contributes to existing knowledge of the complexity of crisis communication as well as convergence behaviour.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. 35 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 July 2021

Yen-I Lee, Xuerong Lu and Yan Jin

Although uncertainty has been identified as a key crisis characteristic and a multi-faceted construct essential to effective crisis management research and practice, only a few…

Abstract

Purpose

Although uncertainty has been identified as a key crisis characteristic and a multi-faceted construct essential to effective crisis management research and practice, only a few studies examined publics' perceived uncertainty with a focus on crisis severity uncertainty, leaving crisis responsibility uncertainty uninvestigated in organizational crisis settings.

Design/methodology/approach

To close this research gap empirically, this study employed data from an online survey of a total of 817 US adults to examine how participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their attribution-based crisis emotions might impact their crisis responses such as further crisis information seeking.

Findings

First, findings show that participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty was negatively associated with their attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions (i.e. anxiety, fear, apprehension and sympathy) and external-attribution-dependent (EAD) crisis emotions (i.e. disgust, contempt, anger and sadness), but positively associated with internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) crisis emotions (i.e. guilt, embarrassment and shame). Second, crisis responsibility uncertainty and AI crisis emotions were positive predictors for participants' further crisis information seeking. Third, AI crisis emotions and IAD crisis emotions were parallel mediators for the relationship between participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their further crisis information seeking.

Practical implications

Organizations need to pay attention to the perceived uncertainty about crisis responsibility and attribution-based crisis emotions since they can impact the decision of seeking crisis information during an ongoing organizational crisis.

Originality/value

This study improves uncertainty management in organizational crisis communication research and practice, connecting crisis responsibility uncertainty, attribution-based crisis emotions and publics' crisis information seeking.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 October 2016

Jeesun Kim and Yan Jin

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay of crisis type and felt involvement as well as product category on publics’ anger toward the company and empathy for the…

2027

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay of crisis type and felt involvement as well as product category on publics’ anger toward the company and empathy for the victims.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses an experiment based on a 2 (crisis type: accident vs transgression) × 2 (publics’ felt crisis involvement: high vs low) × 2 (product category in crisis: food-related vs technology-related) mixed design.

Findings

Differential main effects on emotions were detected in different consumer product crises. One of the most interesting findings in this study was the main effects of high felt involvement over low felt involvement in strong feelings of anger toward a company and empathy for the victims in both food- and technology-related crisis situations. There was an interaction effect between crisis type and product category on feelings of anger toward a company. Participants in the food-related crisis condition reported more anger when exposed to a transgression crisis than an accident crisis.

Research limitations/implications

Future research needs to study other important crisis emotions and to measure them with multiple items instead of a single item. It would be useful to find out what combinations among crisis variables would produce interaction effects to better understand how different publics’ emotions are inducted and processed in different crisis situations.

Practical implications

The role of felt involvement on public emotions may not be product category specific, but rather be affectively influential across different product categories. From the standpoint of crisis management practice, the main contribution of the present study is to provide empirical evidence that crisis communication managers could use the level of publics’ felt crisis involvement to better predict publics’ emotions that are likely to be felt and displayed in crisis situations.

Originality/value

This study investigates the crisis-generated discrete emotions as a function of crisis type and felt involvement. Felt involvement should be considered as an important construct due to its potential consequences on publics’ emotions and their behaviors beyond perceptions of crisis responsibility. Crisis response messages should be strategically developed with a consideration of the interplay of crisis type, publics’ felt involvement, and product categories.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 21 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

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