기업위기에 따른 대응전략이 기업태도에 미치는 영향: 기업규모의 역할을 중심으로

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The Effect of Coping Strategy after the Corporate Crisis on Corporate Attitudes: Focusing on Role of Corporate Size

By Fang Guangzhu Advisor : Prof. Jongchul Park Department of Business Administration, Graduate School of Chosun University

Crisis presents a significant threat to corporate performance, assets, consumer and corporate brand. According to many researchers recently interested in studying the effects of such negative information on consumer brand and/or corporate evaluation and how to cope with the corporate crisis effectively. This study highlights the following objectives. Firstly, it shows the conflicting results of previous researches of Ferrin et al.(2007) and Sung et al.(2013). The study of Ferrin et al.(2007) presented the following results: Competence Violation: apology > reticence = denial; Integrity Violation: denial > reticence = apology. Whereas, the study of Sung et al.(2013) presented the following results: Competence Violation: apology > reticence = denial; Integrity Violation: apology > reticence = denial. Hence. it is necessary to re-investigated in accordance with the response strategy and types of crisis. Further, another important objective of this study is to understand the efficacy of reticence. Some researchers prohibits the reticence (Coombs, 1999; Dawar and Pillutla, 2000; Dutta and Pullig, 2011). They are looking into uncontrollable reticence about the crisis. However, some researchers argue the positive effects of reticence (Ferrin et al., 2007; Lee, 2004; McDonald et al., 2010). Therefore, this study tries to re-investigate the effect of reticence. The third objective of this study is to examine how corporate size explores the impact of crisis response. Although previous research has studied the corporate crisis, there is no research on the corporate size. The current study expands on the research of Ferrin et al.(2007) and Sung et al.(2013) by examining how companies repair corporate attitude after crisis. The Experiment 1 has three main findings. First, it is different from previous studies, and in the context of this study it shows that, in case of large corporate: apology for competence crisis can be more successful while repairing corporate attitude. On the other hand, apology for integrity crisis will be more appropriate way to repair corporate attitude. Second finding is similar to the study of the Sung et al.(2013) where it shows that, for small corporate: apology is found to be the most effective strategy to repair corporate attitude, no matter the crisis is perceived as a violation of competence and integrity. Finally, for the large corporate, in the case of competence crisis the reticence strategy fosters more appropriately to repair corporate attitude than denial strategy. Looking at the results of the experiment 1, it is necessary to consider the following issues. First, the previous experimental results using real names of corporation, whether the reliability for the corporate prior to the evaluation (e.g., trustworthy corporation vs. untrustworthy corporation) may be a problem(e.g., Korea may perceived Chinese corporations as not being trustworthy corporation, Apple may be recognized as a untrustworthy corporation). For this reason, untrustworthy corporation, regardless of the type of crisis, it would have caused a positive reaction to an unconditional apology to the consumer. Also, because corporations like Apple is a trusted corporation and during competence crisis, apologize and reticence strategy will be more effective in order to repair corporate attitude. The corporation is a reliable and effective because it provides strategic ambiguity in reticence. Finally, A case of selecting a medium level of crisis intensity in Experiment 1, shows there is a possibility that the efficacy of reticence appears. Due to this issue in Experiment 1, the study continues further conducting Experiment 2 where, it does not focus on the trust issue of larger corporate（e.g., bad corporate reputation, high anti-corporate sentiment), and manipulate the intensity of the crisis ahead strongly validated by re-presenting the results in . In Experiment 2 findings, statistically insignificant result is a three-way interaction effect on corporate reputations, crisis types and response strategies, regardless of the type of crisis apology strategy was the most effective strategy. In other words, It can be seen that the severity issues on corporate behavior than the issue of trust. Thus it can be seen that for supporting the results of Experiment 1. The overall summary of this study are as follows. first, for small corporation: apology is found to be the most effective strategy to repair corporate attitude and corporate trust, no matter the crisis is perceived as a violation of competence and integrity. Second, for large corporation: About the integrity crisis, regardless of the severity of the crisis, sincere apology strategy will be more appropriate way to repair corporate attitude and corporate trust(vs. denial strategy and reticence strategy). About the competence crisis, if the crisis is severe apology strategy is more effective than denial strategy and reticence strategy, if the crisis is not severe apology strategies and reticence strategy appeared to be more effective than denial strategy.

Key words: Corporate Crisis, Competence Crisis, Integrity Crisis, Crisis Response Strategy, Corporate Size, Corporate Attitude, corporate reputation, severity of the crisis.