Painter, C. and Martins, J.T. (2017) Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: a hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation. Knowledge and Process Management (Print Edition): the journal of corporate transformation, 24 (3). pp. 204-218. ISSN 1092-4604
Abstract
The discovery in September 2015 of diesel emissions software cheat technology in Volkswagen (VW) cars initiated a process of organisational crisis management and damage limitation by VW, reflected in the contemporaneous intensive production of public information statements, including press releases, statements to shareholders and investors, and transcripts of oral evidence. Through taking stock of a selection of these public information statements, this article examines the organisational communication management strategies employed to respond to the crisis situation, making an integrated use of attribution, crisis management, and information orientation theories as an interpretive lens. An interpretivist, hermeneutic approach was used to carry out qualitative content analysis on selected statements issued by VW. The analysis reveals that there is a connection between statements relating to attribution and statements relating to information orientation, at the time of the crisis and in preparing future action. Priorities for action form part of the overall crisis management and image restoration approach. Proposed changes in information orientation constitute a key dimension of the company's public response to mitigate the offensiveness of the crisis. The analysis performed demonstrates the applicability of the proposed integration of attribution, crisis management, image restoration, and information orientation theories to better understand and explain how large corporations respond publicly to organisational crisis episodes, more specifically the ways in which attributions, crisis management, and image restoration strategies are related to aspects of information orientation as both components and consequences of the crisis.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Authors. Knowledge and Process Management Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2017 08:29 |
Last Modified: | 18 Aug 2023 10:28 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/kpm.1544 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:118013 |
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