| dc.description.abstract | No company is immune to being faced with a crisis. The crises unfold fast, with
unpredictable outcomes for brand reputation and consumer perception. Having
appropriate crisis response plans in place is therefore crucial for organizations to
ensure its survival after a crisis.
The literature review identifies several topics of interest related to crisis
management and corporate social responsibility (CSR), including the importance
of appropriate response mechanisms after a crisis, CSR in companies’
communication efforts, various types of crises, and relevant image repairing
mechanisms.
Through an online experiment (N=305), participants were exposed to a fictional
company undergoing a crisis, and one of five image repairing mechanisms.
Participants were also assigned to a stimulus that included priming of CSR
behaviors, or the control group that had no mention of CSR activities, resulting in
a total of 10 possible conditions.
The data was tested using paired samples t-test, independent samples t-test, and
one-way ANOVA. The results show that corrective action and evasion of
responsibility are the most effective mechanisms to use as these have a successful
outcome in terms of perception of the company. The study also establishes that
consumers who are exposed to CSR activities will have significantly higher
perception of the company than those that are not exposed to CSR activities, but
that CSR will have little to no effect on perception after a crisis occurs. | en_US |
