Corporate apology and crisis communication

76 Pages·2017·11.32 MB·English

Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Dissertations
2011
Corporate apology and crisis communication; The
effect of responsibility admittance and sympathetic
expression on public anger relief
Surin Chung
Iowa State University
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Recommended Citation
Chung, Surin, "Corporate apology and crisis communication; The effect of responsibility admittance and sympathetic expression on
public anger relief" (2011).Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 10248.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/10248
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Corporate apology and crisis communication: The effect of responsibility admittance and
sympathetic expression on public anger relief
by
Surin Chung

A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE

Major: Journalism and Mass Communication
Program of Study Committee:
Suman Lee, Major Professor
Sela Sar
Mack Shelley

Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa
2011

Copyright © Surin Chung, 2011. All rights reserved.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES.………………………………………………..………………….....iv
LIST OF TABLES.……………………………………………………………….............v
ABSTRACT.……………………………………………………………………………..vi
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION....………………………………………….…………...1
CHATPER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW.…………………………………...…….……....4
Crisis and crisis response strategy.………………………………………………..4
Anger relief.……………………………………………………………………….7
Components of apology.…………………………………………………………10
Responsibility.…………………………………………………………………...12
Sympathy.………………………………………………………………………..15
Four types of apology.…………………………………………………………...18
Pre-existing attitudes....…………………………………………………………..22
CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY.…………...………………………………………….24
Participants....…………………………………………………………………….24
Procedures....……………………………………………………………………..25
Manipulation of independent variables…………………………………….…….26
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Dependent measures……………………………………………………………..27
Pre-existing attitudes……………………………………………………………..28
CHAPTER 4. RESULTS.…………………………………...…………………………...30
Sample Characteristics…………………………………………………………...30
Descriptive statistics……………………………………………………………..32
Baseline pre-existing attitudes…………………………..……………………….35
Baseline anger……………………………………………………………………37
Hypotheses testing……………………………………………………………….38
Research question………………………………………………………………..40
CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSIONS.………………...……...………………………………...42
Significance of the study……...………………….………………………………42
Limitations and suggestions for future study.……………………………………48
REFERENCES……….………………………………………………………………….50
APPENDIX A: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVAL…………………..58
APPENDIX B: A NEWS ARTICLE…………………………………………………….59
APPENDIX C: FOUR TYPES OF CORPORATE APOLOGY……………………...…61
APPENDIX D: QUESTIONNAIRE………………………………………………..……65
iv

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS..………………………………………………………...…….68
v

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Four types of corporate apology.………………………………………......…. 20
Figure 2. Interaction effect of responsibility and sympathy on anger relief.………….... 41
vi

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Sample characteristics.……………..……………………………………...……31
Table 2. Descriptive statistics……..……………………….………………………….....33
Table 3. One-way ANOVAs for attitudes toward the oil industry and B.P…..……….....36
Table 4. One-way ANOVA for anger after reading the news article....…………....…....37
Table 5. ANCOVA for the effects of responsibility and sympathy on anger relief…..... 39
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ABSTRACT
This study investigates how corporate apologies can relieve the level of public
anger under a crisis situation. A total of 147 undergraduate students read a fictional news
story depicting an oil spill accident and they read one of four corporate apology
statements as a combination of responsibility admittance (active vs. passive) and
sympathetic expression (high vs. low). People’s anger levels toward the company were
measured before and after reading apology statement and compared. This study found
that an apology statement with active responsibility is more likely to relieve public anger
than that with passive responsibility. However, there was no significant difference on
public anger relief between the group who read highly sympathetic apology and the one
who read low sympathetic apology. There was no interaction effect between
responsibility admittance and sympathetic expression of corporate apology on public
anger relief.
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Organizations are vulnerable to unpredictable crises in their relationship with the
public. For example, product recall, disasters or accidents caused by a manufacturing
plant, or a CEO’s corruption are some of those crisis situations organizations can
experience. Whenever crisis happens, organizations usually apologize for the situation,
admit their mistakes directly or indirectly, and ultimately try to relieve public anger to
protect the organization’s reputation. Therefore, how to apologize to the public during
crisis situations is an important issue to organizations.
It is widely accepted that an apology is a basic conflict resolution technique
serving a crucial social lubrication role (Frantz & Bennigson, 2005). Several studies show
that victims feel less angry and have positive impressions toward an offender when they
receive an apology (Ohbuchi, Kameda, & Agarie, 1989). A sincere apology also allows
the offender not to be required to receive further rehabilitative punishment and alleviates
aggression tendencies of the victims toward the offender (Frantz & Bennigson, 2005;
Kim, Ferrin, Cooper, & Dirks, 2004; Schlenker & Darby, 1981). Thus, many people
utilize an apology as a self-presentation strategy to reduce or resolve interpersonal
conflict (Frantz & Bennigson, 2005).
The strategic and effective apology helps organizations deal with various crisis
situations. When organizations face problems such as technical-error accidents, human-
error accidents, and/or organizational misdeed, effective apologies play a significant role
in relieving the public’s anger and resolving a conflict on the issues. For example, Patel
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and Reinsch (2003) mentioned that apologies increase the victim’s propensity to forgive
in a corporate crisis. Goodwin and Ross (1992) also found that apologies from companies
raised consumers’ satisfaction and the perceived fairness of responses to service failures.
Similarly, Coombs and Holladay (1996) maintained that an apology serves to protect an
organizational reputation after a crisis when organizations adopt a strategic apology
response.
All apologies, however, do not have “an ideal and equal” strategic value in a crisis
situation. Strategic values of apologies are affected by numerous variables such as
accepting responsibility, expression of remorse/sympathy, and compensation (Benoit &
Drew, 1997; Cohen, 1999; Fuchs-Burnett, 2002; Patel & Reinsch, 2003). Several studies
also indicated that the extent to which an apology contains such components determines
the level of forgiveness it achieves, level of anger victims feel, and level of organizational
reputation (Combs & Holladay, 2008; Darby & Schlenker, 1982; Scher & Darly, 1997;
Tedesci & Riordan, 1981). Accordingly, if an apology does not include proper
components, it could be perceived as superficial and insincere.
In this study, two components were selected as important determinants on the
effectiveness of corporate apology: (1) responsibility admittance and (2) sympathetic
expression. According to Schlenker (1980), “apologies allow an actor to admit
blameworthiness for an undesirable event but also attempt to obtain a pardon from the
audience by convincing the latter that the event should not be considered a fair
representation of what the actor is really like as a person” (p. 154). Robbennolt (2003)
mentioned that an apology is viewed as sincere when the offender admits responsibility
and shows sympathy for victims. Nadler and Liviatan (2006) also argued that an apology