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Dear All,

Please join us online on Monday, 14 November, at 4pm GMT, for the third R:ETRO seminar of this term, hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

Arno Kourula (University of Amsterdam) will be giving a paper entitled "Read All About It? Media Coverage, Stigmatization and Company Responses in the Wake of Corporate Scandals" (with Ralf Barkemeyer, Lutz Preuss, Olivier Gergaud, and Christophe Faugere).

Abstract:

This paper analyzes mass media coverage of corporate scandals, utilizing a novel dataset of 200 scandals covering a 30-year period. We examine how media coverage is impacted by prior firm stigmatization, by the corporate response strategy in the aftermath of the scandal, and by the interconnections between these two aspects. We find that prior firm stigmatization alters levels of media attention in the wake of a corporate scandal. We also find that the choice of a response strategy of denial – relative to strategies of accepting responsibility or claiming diminished responsibility – increases media coverage for low stigma organizations but not for high stigma ones.  We explain these results using Expectancy Violation Theory, as a scandal hitting a highly stigmatized organization merely confirms existing preconceptions and, therefore, lacks novelty. In our analysis, we also identify different media responses for financial and general interest newspapers. The key contribution of our study is uncovering new facets of the intricate interplay between stigma and scandal.

Click here to register.

I hope to see many of you there!

All the best,
Rita

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Rita Mota
Assistant Professor
ESADE Business School
Barcelona
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