Corporate Conscience: Applying Ethics of Care Informed Crisis Responses to Corporate Social Advocacy Backlash
Open Access
- Author:
- Buckley, Christen
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 23, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Anthony Olorunnisola, Program Head/Chair
Holly Overton, Major Field Member
Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Major Field Member
Patrick Plaisance, Outside Unit & Field Member
Denise Bortree, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- corporate social advocacy
ethics of care
situational crisis communication theory
crisis response type
corporate reputation
public interest communications
boycott
backlash
activism intentions - Abstract:
- The purpose of this study is threefold. First, this study improves practitioners’ and scholars’ understanding of the efficacy of incorporating ethically informed language into crisis responses, specifically the degree of ethics of care. Second, the present study applies the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) to explore the most effective crisis responses (rebuild-apology x diminish-excuse) to backlash to a corporate social advocacy (CSA) initiative. The tertiary goal of this study is to explore how different ethics-of-care-informed crisis responses, specifically diminish-excuse or rebuild-apology, impact corporate reputation, subsequent supportive or non-supportive behavioral intentions toward the corporation, and activism intentions toward the issue. Methodologically, this study contributes to the growing body of research on CSA and provides an empirically tested example of incorporating ethics of care into experimental research. In addition, this study considers the potential of mitigating or elevating crisis as a result of backlash to CSA and teases out both supportive and non-supportive intentions toward a company, as well as increased activism intentions on behalf of an issue. Results indicate that stakeholders may respond to lower perceived care in diminish-excuse crisis response with greater activism intentions in an attempt to fill a perceived void in the corporations’ CSA efforts. In addition, findings indicate that providing no response to backlash to CSA as a crisis can potentially increase boycott intentions. The practical and theoretical implications of applying SCCT and ethics of care to a CSA context, as well as future research, are posited.