How Sustainability Ratings Might Deter "Greenwashing": A Closer Look at Ethical Corporate Communication

Of the many ethical corporate marketing practices, many firms use corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to enhance their corporate image. Yet consumers, overwhelmed by these more or less well-founded CSR claims often have trouble identifying truly responsible firms. This confusion encourages "greenwashing" and may make CSR initiatives less effective. On the basis of attribution theory, this study investigates the role of independent sustainability ratings on consumers' responses to companies' CSR communication. Experimental results indicate the negative effect of a poor sustainability rating for corporate brand evaluations in the case of CSR communication, because consumers infer less intrinsic motives by the brand. Sustainability ratings thus could act to deter "greenwashing" and encourage virtuous firms to persevere in their CSR practices.ethical corporate marketing, CSR communication, attribution theory, sustainability ratings

How Sustainability Ratings Might Deter “Greenwashing”: A Closer Look at Ethical Corporate Communication.

Of the many ethical corporate marketing practices, many firms use corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to enhance their corporate image. Yet consumers, overwhelmed by these more or less well-founded CSR claims, often have trouble identifying truly responsible firms. This confusion encourages “greenwashing” and may make CSR initiatives less effective. On the basis of attribution theory, this study investigates the role of independent sustainability ratings on consumers’ responses to companies’ CSR communication. Experimental results indicate the negative effect of a poor sustainability rating for corporate brand evaluations in the case of CSR communication, because consumers infer less intrinsic motives by the brand. Sustainability ratings thus could act to deter “greenwashing” and encourage virtuous firms to persevere in their CSR practices.attribution theory; ethical corporate marketing; sustainability ratings; CSR communication;

Using Case Work as a Pretest to Measure Crisis Leadership Preparedness

Today’s leaders must thrive in a world of turbulence and constant change. Unstable conditions frequently generate crises, emphasizing the need for crisis leadership preparedness, which is missing from many business curricula. Thus, the purpose of this work was to develop a learning module in crisis leadership preparedness. As a baseline measure or pretest, 217 graduate students were asked to analyze two crisis leadership cases during the first week of an entry leadership class. Content analysis provided the method to identify where student analyses fell short. These gaps in learning then informed the creation of student learning objectives. Applying inquiry-based learning, I then suggest instructional methods that I incorporated into an active learning module to better prepare today’s leaders for crisis leadership

Institutional and policy analysis of river basin management : the Alto-Tiete river basin, Sao Paulo, Brazil

The authors describe and analyze river basin management in the most intensely urbanized and industrialized region of Brazil. The area covered by the Alto Tiete basin is almost coterminous with the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo. With a drainage area of 5,985 square kilometers (2.4 percent of the state's territory), the basin encompasses 35 of the 39 municipalities and 99.5 percent of the population of Greater Sao Paulo. Population growth and urban sprawl in Greater Sao Paulo have been rapid and uncontrolled in recent decades. In 2000, 17.8 million people lived in the basin and by 2010 the population is estimated to reach 20 million. This massive human occupation was accompanied by the large-scale construction of water infrastructure, including dams, pumping stations, canals, tunnels, and inter-basin transfers to and from neighboring basins. Today, the Alto-Tiete basin is served by a complex hydraulic and hydrological system. Despite this extensive water infrastructure, the water availability of the region is still very low (201 m3-hab-an) and even lower than the semiarid regions of the Brazilian Northeast. The two key management issues to be addressed in the Alto Tiete basin are water quantity to supply a burgeoning population, and water quality which is deteriorating to a point where water availability for a range of uses is severely affected. Urban flood control and mitigation represents another major challenge in the basin. Although important achievements have been made over the past 15 years, the decentralization process - characterized by the creation of the Alto-Tiete committee and its subcommittees and some financing from the State Water Resources Fund - has yet to reveal measurable physical results such as the improvement of water quality or the rationalization of water use. It is undeniable that the Alto-Tiete committee and its subcommittees have already played an important leadership role around several issues. An extraordinary mobilization around water issues, problems, and management has occurred, even though solving many water-related problems may be beyond the capacity of the committees or even of the water resources management system as a whole. Charging for water remains one of the key issues in making the Alto Tiete Committee more relevant and giving it more say in water investment and management decisions. As long as such decisions remain at the individual agency level (both state and municipal), decisionmaking will remain fragmented and it is unlikely that key policy instruments to curb water demand increases and pollution will be implemented.Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Water and Industry,Drought Management,Water Conservation

Fashion without pollution: How consumers evaluate brands after an NGO campaign aimed at reducing toxic chemicals in the fashion industry

This research analyzes the effects on consumer responses of an NGO campaign (Greenpeace\u2019s 2011 Detox campaign), aimed at reducing toxic chemicals in the manufacturing processes and final products of fashion brands. The proposed model explains and tests the mechanisms underlying negative consumer reactions to the fashion brands that are the focus of NGO campaigns. The findings illustrate the mediating role that consumers\u2019 evaluations of brand blame play in their attitude towards such brands and subsequent purchase intentions. Two relevant moderators \u2013 (1) consumer reasons for justifying brands\u2019 unethical behavior in the market and (2) the decision of certain brands to comply with the NGO campaign\u2019s requests \u2013 play a significant part in the mediation mechanism. These findings make original contributions to theory and have important implications for consumers, companies, and NGOs, because they provide fresh insights into understanding, and handling effectively, consumer reactions to NGO campaigns aimed at reducing the use of toxic chemicals in the fashion industry

Early responses to H7N9 in southern mainland China

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. © 2014 Goodwin and Sun; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: H7N9 posed potentially serious health challenges for Chinese society. The previous SARS outbreak in this country was accompanied by contradictory information, while worries about wide-spread influenza led to discrimination worldwide. Early understanding of public threat perceptions is therefore important for effective public health communication and intervention. Methods: We interviewed 1011 respondents by phone two weeks after the first case. Questions examined risk awareness and media use, beliefs about the emergence of the threat and those most at risk, anxiety about infection and preventive and avoidant behaviours. Results: Results demonstrate moderate levels of anxiety but relatively high levels of trust towards government officials. Threat emergence was associated with hygiene levels, temperature change, floating pigs in the Huangpu River and migration to the city. Anxiety predicted both recommended and non-recommended behavioural changes. Conclusions: Comparatively high levels of trust in Chinese government advice about H7N9 contrast positively with previous pandemic communications in China. Anxiety helped drive both recommended and non-recommended behaviours, with potentially important economic and social implications. This included evidence of 'othering’ of those associated with the threat (e.g. migrants). Findings emphasise the need to manage public communications early during new influenza outbreaks.Fudan Tydall Centre and Fudan Media and Public Opinion Center

Managing Reputation Risk and Situational Crisis in Higher Institutions of Learning

Extant literature on crisis and corporate reputation management has presented the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) model as a valid and reliable framework for managing crisis and predicting stakeholders’perceptions of organizations’ reputation in times of crisis. In order to verifythe applicability of the model in higher institutions of learning in adeveloping country context, a study was conducted in September, 2011 in twopublic universities in Nigeria. The findings of the study revealed thatalthough the institutions did not fully implement the core tenets of SCCT, thestrategies adopted in each of the two crisis situations were similar to some ofthe recommendations of the SCCT in different ways. While one institutionfocused on a strategy similar to what the SCCT model describes as “rebuildcrisis response strategy” with informing and adjusting tactics, the secondinstitution utilized a victimization or “Victimage” strategy with strongattribution of blames; and frequent reminder of the stakeholders of the extentof losses that the institution would incur from the crisis. The outcome wasthat the institution with high emphasis on rebuilding and informationadjustment strategy recorded very little damage to its reputation capital, duringand after the crises. Conversely, the second institution which believed invictimization and high attribution recorded significant losses in reputation assets,which included withdrawal of key stakeholders and loss of recognition ofprograms by some professional agencies. The implication for crisis managers in thetwo institutions includes the need to always approach situational crises in aholistic manner. Such holistic approach would involve a refocus, critical analysis,planning and implementation of crisis response strategies based on the relevantsituations, events, and the people concerned. The research was designed as acase study with focus group discussions as the data collection method.Altogether, 16 officers including eight top and senior administrative staff whowere actively involved in the negotiation and communication programs during the crises in the two institutions participated in the focus group discussions.Keywords: situational crisis, reputation risk, stakeholders’perceptions, stakeholders’ value, reputation capital, reputation asset

Toward Extended Situational Crisis Communication Theory: Include Visuals, Prior Performance, and Framing Devices

Human brains are inherently capable of receiving and processing visual messages faster than written text messages. The recent proliferation of internet use, social media platforms, smartphones, and online news media sites facilitated the spread of visual content (e.g., pictures, videos, and data visualizations) online much higher than before. However, visual contents have been largely ignored in crisis communication research, leaving the crisis managers to devise strategic crisis responses and deal with a crisis without sufficient research evidence. Responding to a recent research call to fill the gap, this dissertation conducts a 2 (picture: action vs. damage) × 3 (distinctiveness: high vs. low vs. no) between-subject experimental design, informed by attribution theory (AT) and situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). This online experiment aims to see the effects of pictures and an organization\u27s distinctiveness (i.e., an organization\u27s prior good or bad performance) on people\u27s crisis reactions in a real oil-spill crisis phenomenon and how both the pictures and the distinctiveness interact with each other. The effects were tested on people\u27s five reactions: a) crisis responsibility, b) negative emotion, c) negative word of mouth, d) punitiveness, and e) purchase intention. Visual stimuli manipulation was created using pictures relating to actions (e.g., cleaning spilled oil) and damages (e.g., dolphin carcass). Distinctiveness stimuli manipulation was created using written texts relating good or bad performance in the past. Simple effect results show that the damaging pictures invoke significantly higher negative emotion among participants and their higher punitiveness toward the company than the action pictures. At the same time, the crisis-hit company\u27s prior bad performance information (i.e., low distinctiveness), compared to its prior good performance (i.e., high distinctiveness), leads to people\u27s higher crisis responsibility, higher negative emotion, higher negative word of mouth, higher punitiveness, and lower purchase intention toward the company. There are significant interaction effects between picture and distinctiveness. In other words, the distinctiveness effects are moderated by or depend on the levels of pictures. The results contributed to the crisis communication literature by offering evidence supporting visual effects on people\u27s perceptions in a crisis and the roles of framing devices in both visual and textual content in the SCCT model. The insights are provided in the contexts of a social media platform and a real crisis. Overall, this dissertation proposed an extension of the SCCT model offering a more in-depth understanding of a crisis and its management, which is not adequately explained in the old model. Based on the insights, the study also offered practical implications for crisis communication practitioners and future research directions in visual crisis communication

At the Intersections of Dialogue, Social Media, and Crisis Communication: A Case Study of Consolidated Edison\u27s Communicative Response to Superstorm Sandy

Crisis is constantly lurking in the shadows for organizations, and leaders must be prepared to respond when it strikes. Traditional organization-stakeholder communication models have largely relied on one-way frameworks, but the advent and widespread adoption of social media is changing the way organizations and stakeholders interact. This project explores how one organization, Consolidated Edison, utilized Twitter to communicate dialogically with stakeholders during the 2012 Superstorm Sandy crisis. Analysis focuses on how the organization\u27s use of dialogue and Sturges\u27 (1994) instructing and adjusting information tactics helped mitigate negative backlash from stakeholders throughout the crisis. Theoretical and practical implications for public relations and crisis communication are discussed, and future research directions are presented