Corporate Crisis-Response Match

Abstract

When suspicions of corporate misconduct and crime emerge in the public, organizations respond in different ways. Their initial accounts can be defensive or accommodative, and they can reject responsibility or excuse wrongdoings (Bundy and Pfarrer 2015). This chapter compares initial corporate responses to later findings in fraud examinations by internal investigators. This chapter applies the concept of social approval to examine the match or mismatch between situational attributions found in examination reports and initial responses from the organizations. Thirteen investigation reports regarding corporate scandals in