An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of using organi
zational spokespersons of ethnic backgrounds similar to or different
from possible stakeholders of a multinational organization. The inves
tigation used a fictitious crisis in the United States and varied the
home country of the organization involved in the crisis (United States,
Mexico, and Japan), as well as whether the organization used a
spokesperson from its home country. Although the participant groups
did not generally prefer similar spokespersons, path analyses found
that the degree to which each participant identified with his or her
own ethnic group affected spokesperson similarity ratings, which, in
turn, predicted spokesperson credibility ratings. Additionally, the
extent to which participants accepted the crisis response given by the
organization was predicted by spokesperson credibility ratings. Impli
cations for multinational organizations experiencing a crisis in host,
or foreign, countries are discussed.
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