Crisis Management and Communications

Reputation Repair and Behavioral Intentions

A number of researchers in public relations, communication, and marketing have shed light on how to repair the reputational damage a crisis inflicts on an organization. At the center of this research is a list of reputation repair strategies. Bill Benoit (1995; 1997) has done the most to identify the reputation repair strategies. He analyzed and synthesized strategies from many different research traditions that shared a concern for reputation repair. Coombs (2007a) integrated the work of Benoit with others to create a master list that integrated various writings into one list. Table 5 presents the Master List of Reputation Repair Strategies. The reputation repair strategies vary in terms of how much they accommodate victims of this crisis (those at risk or harmed by the crisis). Accommodate means that the response focuses more on helping the victims than on addressing organizational concerns. The master list arranges the reputation repair strategies from the least to the most accommodative reputation repair strategies. (For more information on reputation repair strategies see also Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger, 2006).

It should be noted that reputation repair can be used in the crisis response phase, post-crisis phase, or both. Not all crises need reputation repair efforts. Frequently the instructing information and expressions of concern are enough to protect the reputation. When a strong reputation repair effort is required, that effort will carry over into the post-crisis phase. Or, crisis managers may feel more comfortable waiting until the post-crisis phase to address reputation concerns.

A list of reputation repair strategies by itself has little utility. Researchers have begun to explore when a specific reputation repair strategy or combination of strategies should be used. These researchers frequently have used attribution theory to develop guidelines for the use of reputation repair strategies. A short explanation of attribution theory is provided along with its relationship to crisis management followed by a summary of lessons learned from this research.

Attribution theory believes that people try to explain why events happen, especially events that are sudden and negative. Generally, people either attribute responsibility for the event to the situation or the person in the situation. Attributions generate emotions and affect how people interact with those involved in the event. Crises are negative (create damage or threat of damage) and are often sudden so they create attributions of responsibility. People either blame the organization in crisis or the situation. If people blame the organization, anger is created and people react negatively toward the organization. Three negative reactions to attributing crisis responsibility to an organization have been documented: (1) increased damage to an organization’s reputation, (2) reduced purchase intentions and (3) increased likelihood of engaging in negative word-of-mouth (Coombs, 2007b; Coombs & Holladay, 2006).

Most of the research has focused on establishing the link between attribution of crisis responsibility and the threat to the organization’s reputation. A number of studies have proven this connection exists (Coombs, 2004a; Coombs & Holladay, 1996; Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Coombs & Holladay, 2006). The research linking organizational reputation with purchase intention and negative word-of-mouth is less developed but so far has confirmed these two links as well (Coombs, 2007b; Coombs & Holladay, 2006).

Coombs (1995) pioneered the application of attribution theory to crisis management in the public relations literature. His 1995 article began to lay out a theory-based approach to matching the reputation repair strategies to the crisis situation. A series of studies have tested the recommendations and assumptions such as Coombs and Holladay (1996), Coombs & Holladay, (2002) and Coombs (2004a), and Coombs, (2007b). This research has evolved into the Situation Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). SCCT argues that crisis managers match their reputation repair strategies to the reputational threat of the crisis situation. Crisis managers should use increasingly accommodative the reputation repair strategies as the reputational threat from the crisis intensifies (Coombs & Holladay, 1996; Coombs, 2007b).

Crisis managers follow a two-step process to assess the reputational threat of a crisis. The first step is to determine the basic crisis type. A crisis managers considers how the news media and other stakeholders are defining the crisis. Coombs and Holladay (2002) had respondents evaluate crisis types based on attributions of crisis responsibility. They distilled this data to group the basic crises according to the reputational threat each one posed. Table 6 provides a list the basic crisis types and their reputational threat.