IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v167y2023ics0148296323004423.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How verbal and non-verbal cues in a CEO apology for a corporate crisis affect a firm’s social disapproval

Author

Listed:
  • Li, Yi-Na
  • Li, Yan
  • Chen, Haipeng (Allan)
  • Wei, Jiuchang

Abstract

CEOs often apologize in public to minimize social disapproval after a corporate crisis. We study how certain non-verbal (e.g., shooting angle) and verbal cues (e.g., message construal) in a CEO public apology affect the social disapproval of a firm and the underlying mechanism of these effects. Evidence from 117 news reports of 56 CEO public apologies collected from six major newspapers between 2015 and 2019 confirms an interaction effect between the non-verbal and verbal cues in a public CEO apology. A laboratory experiment replicates this effect by manipulating the shooting angle and construal level and additionally demonstrates the process underlying the effect. We discuss how these findings contribute to a better understanding of stakeholder expectations in the aftermath of a corporate crisis and affect firms’ crisis response strategies and leadership responsibilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Yi-Na & Li, Yan & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Wei, Jiuchang, 2023. "How verbal and non-verbal cues in a CEO apology for a corporate crisis affect a firm’s social disapproval," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:167:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323004423
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114084
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323004423
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114084?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sascha Raithel & Stefan J. Hock, 2021. "The crisis‐response match: An empirical investigation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 170-184, January.
    2. Krista Hill & David Boyd, 2015. "Who Should Apologize When an Employee Transgresses? Source Effects on Apology Effectiveness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 163-170, August.
    3. Crijns, Hannelore & Claeys, An-Sofie & Cauberghe, Veroline & Hudders, Liselot, 2017. "Who says what during crises? A study about the interplay between gender similarity with the spokesperson and crisis response strategy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 143-151.
    4. Joan Meyers-Levy & Rui (Juliet) Zhu, 2007. "The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(2), pages 174-186, June.
    5. Bozeman, Dennis P. & Kacmar, K. Michele, 1997. "A Cybernetic Model of Impression Management Processes in Organizations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 9-30, January.
    6. Coombs, W. Timothy, 2015. "The value of communication during a crisis: Insights from strategic communication research," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 141-148.
    7. Boyoun (Grace) Chae & JoAndrea Hoegg, 2013. "The Future Looks "Right": Effects of the Horizontal Location of Advertising Images on Product Attitude," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 40(2), pages 223-238.
    8. Ciaran Heavey & Zeki Simsek & Christina Kyprianou & Marten Risius, 2020. "How do strategic leaders engage with social media? A theoretical framework for research and practice," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(8), pages 1490-1527, August.
    9. Jasmine Tata & Sameer Prasad, 2015. "CSR Communication: An Impression Management Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(4), pages 765-778, December.
    10. Lingling Pan & Gerry McNamara & Jennifer J. Lee & Jerayr (John) Haleblian & Cynthia E. Devers, 2018. "Give it to us straight (most of the time): Top managers’ use of concrete language and its effect on investor reactions," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(8), pages 2204-2225, August.
    11. Janet Luft Mobus, 2005. "Mandatory environmental disclosures in a legitimacy theory context," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 18(4), pages 492-517, August.
    12. Constance E. Helfat & Margaret A. Peteraf, 2015. "Managerial cognitive capabilities and the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(6), pages 831-850, June.
    13. Hakkyun Kim & Akshay R. Rao & Angela Y. Lee, 2009. "It's Time to Vote: The Effect of Matching Message Orientation and Temporal Frame on Political Persuasion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(6), pages 877-889, April.
    14. Blake E. Ashforth & Barrie W. Gibbs, 1990. "The Double-Edge of Organizational Legitimation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(2), pages 177-194, May.
    15. Russell Craig & Joel Amernic, 2018. "Are there Language Markers of Hubris in CEO Letters to Shareholders?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(4), pages 973-986, June.
    16. Joel Amernic & Russell Craig, 2013. "Leadership Discourse, Culture, and Corporate Ethics: CEO-speak at News Corporation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 379-394, December.
    17. ten Brinke, Leanne & Adams, Gabrielle S., 2015. "Saving face? When emotion displays during public apologies mitigate damage to organizational performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 1-12.
    18. Zhao, Dingtao & Wang, Feng & Wei, Jiuchang & Liang, Liang, 2013. "Public reaction to information release for crisis discourse by organization: Integration of online comments," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 485-495.
    19. Lorenzo Patelli & Matteo Pedrini, 2015. "Is Tone at the Top Associated with Financial Reporting Aggressiveness?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 3-19, January.
    20. Irene C. L. Ng & Lu‐Ming Tseng, 2008. "Learning to be Sociable: The Evolution of Homo Economicus," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(2), pages 265-286, April.
    21. Gruber, Daniel A. & Smerek, Ryan E. & Thomas-Hunt, Melissa C. & James, Erika H., 2015. "The real-time power of Twitter: Crisis management and leadership in an age of social media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 163-172.
    22. Doris M. Merkl-Davies & Niamh Brennan & Stuart McLeay, 2011. "Impression management and retrospective sense-making in corporate narratives : a social psychology perspective," Open Access publications 10197/2900, Research Repository, University College Dublin.
    23. Paul A. Pavlou & Angelika Dimoka, 2006. "The Nature and Role of Feedback Text Comments in Online Marketplaces: Implications for Trust Building, Price Premiums, and Seller Differentiation," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 392-414, December.
    24. Derek D. Rucker & Miao Hu & Adam D. Galinsky, 2014. "The Experience versus the Expectations of Power: A Recipe for Altering the Effects of Power on Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 41(2), pages 381-396.
    25. Schoofs, Lieze & Claeys, An-Sofie, 2021. "Communicating sadness: The impact of emotional crisis communication on the organizational post-crisis reputation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 271-282.
    26. Giessner, S.R. & Schubert, T.W., 2007. "High in the Hierarchy: How Vertical Location and Judgments of Leaders' Power are Interrelated," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-021-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    27. Jiuchang Wei & Zhe Ouyang & Haipeng (Allan) Chen, 2017. "Well Known or Well Liked? The Effects of Corporate Reputation on Firm Value at the Onset of a Corporate Crisis," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(10), pages 2103-2120, October.
    28. Kim, Peter H. & Dirks, Kurt T. & Cooper, Cecily D. & Ferrin, Donald L., 2006. "When more blame is better than less: The implications of internal vs. external attributions for the repair of trust after a competence- vs. integrity-based trust violation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 49-65, January.
    29. Jeanne Wilson & C. Brad Crisp & Mark Mortensen, 2013. "Extending Construal-Level Theory to Distributed Groups: Understanding the Effects of Virtuality," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 629-644, April.
    30. Karl E. Weick, 1988. "Enacted Sensemaking In Crisis Situations[1]," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 305-317, July.
    31. Gerald J. Gorn & Yuwei Jiang & Gita Venkataramani Johar, 2008. "Babyfaces, Trait Inferences, and Company Evaluations in a Public Relations Crisis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(1), pages 36-49, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haiying Wei & Yaxuan Ran, 2019. "Male Versus Female: How the Gender of Apologizers Influences Consumer Forgiveness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 371-387, January.
    2. Prithwiraj Choudhury & Dan Wang & Natalie A. Carlson & Tarun Khanna, 2019. "Machine learning approaches to facial and text analysis: Discovering CEO oral communication styles," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(11), pages 1705-1732, November.
    3. Johannes Brunzel, 2023. "Linguistic cues of chief executive officer personality and its effect on performance," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 215-243, January.
    4. Ivan Guitart & Manfred Schwaiger & Johanna Eberhardt, 2024. "How and Why Does Corporate Reputation Moderate Mass Media News’ Impact On Market Value?," Post-Print hal-04346339, HAL.
    5. Zhe Ouyang & Qian Sun & Yang Liu, 2024. "The impact of investor reaction to crisis events on corporate philanthropy: evidence from Chinese firms," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(1), pages 139-163, February.
    6. Michael J. Wynes, 2022. "“Just Say You’re Sorry”: Avoidance and Revenge Behavior in Response to Organizations Apologizing for Fraud," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 129-151, June.
    7. Sonenshein, Scott & Herzenstein, Michal & Dholakia, Utpal M., 2011. "How accounts shape lending decisions through fostering perceived trustworthiness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 69-84, May.
    8. Palmeira, Mauricio & Hartmann, Nathaniel N. & Chan, Eugene & Sekar, Samuel B., 2023. "Don’t blame the powerless: The impact of hierarchy on reactions to responses to ethical scandals," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    9. Schoofs, Lieze & Claeys, An-Sofie, 2021. "Communicating sadness: The impact of emotional crisis communication on the organizational post-crisis reputation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 271-282.
    10. Michele Gendelsky de Oliveira & Graça Azevedo & Jonas Oliveira, 2021. "The Relationship between the Company’s Value and the Tone of the Risk-Related Narratives: The Case of Portugal," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-28, May.
    11. Runesson, Emmeli & Samani, Niuosha, 2023. "Goodwill or “No-will”: Hubris in the tone at the top," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1).
    12. Clarke, Samuel L. & Rhodes, Eric S., 2020. "Entrepreneurial apologies: The mediating role of forgiveness on future cooperation," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 13(C).
    13. Giorgia Miotto & Marc Polo López & Josep Rom Rodríguez, 2019. "Gender Equality and UN Sustainable Development Goals: Priorities and Correlations in the Top Business Schools’ Communication and Legitimation Strategies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-18, January.
    14. Xi Fu & Xiaoxi Wu & Zhifang Zhang, 2021. "The Information Role of Earnings Conference Call Tone: Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 643-660, October.
    15. Charles H. Cho & Matias Laine & Robin W. Roberts & Michelle Rodrigue, 2018. "The Frontstage and Backstage of Corporate Sustainability Reporting: Evidence from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Bill," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 865-886, October.
    16. Leon Windscheid & Lynn Bowes-Sperry & Karsten Jonsen & Michèle Morner, 2018. "Managing Organizational Gender Diversity Images: A Content Analysis of German Corporate Websites," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(4), pages 997-1013, November.
    17. Eyal Eckhaus & Zachary Sheaffer, 2018. "Managerial hubris detection: the case of Enron," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(4), pages 304-325, November.
    18. Zhao, Dingtao & Wang, Feng & Wei, Jiuchang & Liang, Liang, 2013. "Public reaction to information release for crisis discourse by organization: Integration of online comments," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 485-495.
    19. Pollack, Jeffrey M. & Bosse, Douglas A., 2014. "When do investors forgive entrepreneurs for lying?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 741-754.
    20. Veronica L. Thomas & Kendra Fowler & Christina Saenger, 2020. "Celebrity influence on word of mouth: the interplay of power states and power expectations," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 105-120, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:167:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323004423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.