Effect of violation of social missions on public attitude towards a social enterprise crisis: Mediation of causal attribution and moderation of medium and framing of online articles
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online July, 2021
Effect of violation of social missions on public attitude towards a social enterprise crisis: Mediation of causal attribution and moderation of medium and framing of online articles
This study examined the mediating effect of perceived causal attribution of crisis on the relationship between perceived violation of social missions and public attitude, in addition to examining the moderating effects of both the medium and framing of online articles on the relationship between perceived violation of social missions and public attitude and that between perceived causal attribution and public attitude. The study conducted a quantitative content analysis of 511 comments obtained from 16 online articles for analysing a social enterprise crisis. The results supported that perceived causal attribution mediated the effect of perceived violation of social missions on public attitude. In addition, episodically framed articles enhanced the effect of perceived violation of social missions on public attitude, whereas Facebook articles enhanced the effect of perceived causal attribution on public attitude. Implications for public relations practitioners and journalists are discussed in this article.
AllardTGriffinD (2017) Comparative price and the design of effective product communications. Journal of Marketing81(5): 16–29.
2.
BattilanaJLeeMWalkerJ, et al. (2012) In search of the hybrid ideal. Stanford Social Innovation Review10(3): 50–55.
3.
BoczkowskiPJMitchelsteinEMatassiM (2018) ‘News comes across when I’m in a moment of leisure’: Understanding the practices of incidental news consumption on social media. New Media & Society20: 3523–3539.
4.
BundyJPfarrerMDShortCE, et al. (2017) Crises and crisis management: Integration, interpretation, and research development. Journal of Management43(6): 1661–1692.
5.
CammaertsB (2008) Critiques on the participatory potentials of Web 2.0. Communication, Culture & Critique1(4): 358–377.
6.
CarrollABShabanaKM (2010) The business case for corporate social responsibility: A review of concepts, research and practice. International Journal of Management Reviews12(1): 85–105.
7.
ChenHT (2018) Spiral of silence on social media and the moderating role of disagreement and publicness in the network: Analyzing expressive and withdrawal behaviors. New Media & Society20: 3917–3936.
8.
CohenNS (2015) Entrepreneurial journalism and the precarious state of media work. South Atlantic Quarterly114(3): 513–533.
9.
CoombsWT (2007) Protecting organization reputations during a crisis: The development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate Reputation Review10(3): 163–176.
10.
CoombsWTHolladaySJ (2007) The negative communication dynamic: Exploring the impact of stakeholder affect on behavioral intentions. Journal of Communication Management11(4): 300–312.
11.
DacinMTDacinPATraceyP (2011) Social entrepreneurship: A critique and future directions. Organization Science22(5): 1203–1213.
12.
DeanDH (2004) Consumer reaction to negative publicity: Effects of corporate reputation, response, and responsibility for a crisis event. International Journal of Business Communication41(2): 192–211.
13.
DefournyJNyssensM (2008) Social enterprise in Europe: Recent trends and developments. Social Enterprise Journal4(3): 202–228.
14.
DefournyJNyssensM (2010) Conceptions of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: Convergences and divergences. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship1(1): 32–53.
15.
Di DomenicoMHaughHTraceyP (2010) Social bricolage: Theorizing social value creation in social enterprises. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice34(4): 681–703.
16.
DiochonMAndersonAR (2011) Ambivalence and ambiguity in social enterprise: Narratives about values in reconciling purpose and practices. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal7(1): 93–109.
17.
EbrahimABattilanaJMairJ (2014) The governance of social enterprises: Mission drift and accountability challenges in hybrid organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior34: 81–100.
18.
EmmettA (2008) Networking news: Traditional news outlets turn to social networking web sites in an effort to build their online audiences. American Journalism Review30(6): 40–44.
19.
EtterMAVestergaardA (2015) Facebook and the public framing of a corporate crisis. Corporate Communications: An International Journal20(2): 163–177.
20.
HaedickeMA (2012) ‘Keeping our mission, changing our system’: Translation and organizational change in Natural Foods Co-ops. The Sociological Quarterly53(1): 44–67.
21.
HayesAF (2018) Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach, 2nd edn.New York: Guilford Press.
22.
HermidaAFletcherFKorellD, et al. (2012) Share, like, recommend: Decoding the social media news consumer. Journalism Studies13(5–6): 815–824.
23.
HilleSBakkerP (2014) Engaging the social news user: Comments on news sites and Facebook. Journalism Practice8(5): 563–572.
24.
HoltonAEChyiHI (2012) News and the overloaded consumer: Factors influencing information overload among news consumers. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking15(11): 619–624.
25.
HuangYH (2008) Trust and relational commitment in corporate crises: The effects of crisis communicative strategy and form of crisis response. Journal of Public Relations Research20(3): 297–327.
26.
IpCYLiangCWuSC, et al. (2018) Enhancing social entrepreneurial intentions through entrepreneurial creativity: A comparative study between Taiwan and Hong Kong. Creativity Research Journal30(2): 132–142.
27.
IpCYWuSCLiuHC, et al. (2017) Revisiting the antecedents of social entrepreneurial intentions in Hong Kong. International Journal of Educational Psychology6(3): 301–323.
28.
IyengarS (1991) Is Anyone Responsible: How Television Frames Political Issues. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
29.
JeongSH (2009) Public’s responses to an oil spill accident: A test of the attribution theory and situational crisis communication theory. Public Relations Review35(3): 307–309.
30.
JinY (2010) Making sense sensibly in crisis communication: How publics’ crisis appraisals influence their negative emotions, coping strategy preferences, and crisis response acceptance. Communication Research37(4): 522–552.
31.
KimS (2013) Corporate ability or virtue: Relative effectiveness of prior corporate associations in times of crisis. International Journal of Strategic Communication7(4): 241–256.
32.
KleinJDawarN (2004) Corporate social responsibility and consumers’ attributions and brand evaluations in a product-harm crisis. International Journal of Research in Marketing21(3): 203–217.
33.
KochTObermaierMRiesmeyerC (2018) Powered by public relations: Mutual perceptions of PR practitioners’ bases of power over journalism. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 17September. DOI: 10.1177/1464884917726421.
34.
LeeBK (2005) Hong Kong consumers’ evaluation in an airline crash: A path model analysis. Journal of Public Relations Research17(4): 363–391.
35.
LischkaJA (2018) Logics in social media news making: How social media editors marry the Facebook logic with journalistic standards. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 19July. DOI: 10.1177/1464884918788472.
36.
LischkaJAStressigJBünzliF (2017) News about newspaper advertisers: To what extent can corporate advertising budgets predict editorial uptake and coverage of corporate press releases. Journalism18(10): 1397–1414.
37.
LiuBPennington-GrayL (2015) Bed bugs bite the hospitality industry: A framing analysis of bed bug news coverage. Tourism Management48: 33–42.
38.
LiuH-CIpCYLiangC (2018) A new runway for journalists: On the intentions of journalists to start social enterprises. Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation14(2): 83–100.
39.
MasonAM (2014) The impact of media frames and treatment responsibility within the situational crisis communication theory framework. Corporate Reputation Review17(1): 78–90.
40.
MasonAM (2018) Media frames and crisis events: Understanding the impact on corporate reputations, responsibility attributions, and negative affect. International Journal of Business Communication. Epub ahead of print 16May. DOI: 10.1177/2329488416648951.
41.
MongaABJohnDR (2008) When does negative brand publicity hurt: The moderating influence of analytic versus holistic thinking. Journal of Consumer Psychology18(4): 320–332.
42.
MongaABJohnDR (2010) What makes brands elastic? The influence of brand concept and styles of thinking on brand extension evaluation. Journal of Marketing74(3): 80–92.
43.
MüllerPSchneidersPSchäferS (2016) Appetizer or main dish: Explaining the use of Facebook news posts as a substitute for other news sources. Computers in Human Behavior65: 431–441.
44.
NikbinDHyunSSIranmaneshM, et al. (2016) Airline travelers’ causal attribution of service failure and its impact on trust and loyalty formation: The moderating role of corporate social responsibility. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research21(4): 355–374.
45.
Oeldorf-HirschASundarSS (2015) Posting, commenting, and tagging: Effects of sharing news stories on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior44: 240–249.
46.
PelozaJShangJ (2011) How can corporate social responsibility activities create value for stakeholders: A systematic review. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science39(1): 117–135.
47.
PenningtonRBirthiselJ (2016) When new media make news: Framing technology and sexual assault in the Steubenville rape case. New Media & Society18(11): 2435–2451.
48.
PlerhoplesAE (2015) Social enterprise as commitment: A roadmap. Journal of Law & Policy48(1): 89–137.
49.
RamusTVaccaroA (2017) Stakeholders matter: How social enterprises address mission drift. Journal of Business Ethics143(2): 307–322.
50.
SchwarzA (2012) How publics use social media to respond to blame games in crisis communication: The Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg 2010. Public Relations Review38(3): 430–437.
51.
TandocECJrVosTP (2016) The journalist is marketing the news: Social media in the gatekeeping process. Journalism Practice10(8): 950–966.
52.
Tenenboim-WeinblattKBadenC (2018) Journalistic transformation: How source texts are turned into news stories. Journalism19(4): 481–499.
53.
UtzSSchultzFGlockaS (2013) Crisis communication online: How medium, crisis type and emotions affected public reactions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Public Relations Review39(1): 40–46.
54.
WalkerMHeereBParentMM, et al. (2010) Social responsibility and the Olympic Games: The mediating role of consumer attributions. Journal of Business Ethics95(4): 659–680.
55.
WeinerB (1986) An Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion. New York: Springer.
56.
ZahraSAGedajlovicENeubaumDO, et al. (2009) A typology of social entrepreneurs: Motives, search processes and ethical challenges. Journal of Business Venturing24(5): 519–532.
