How to Manage Organizational Reputation when Under Attack: Learnings from the Child and Adult Protection Authorities

Abstract

What does the reputation management of a public authority look like under extreme conditions? The present article studies the Swiss Child and Adult Protection Authorities (CAPA), which experienced a major reputational crisis after a mother killed her two children in 2015 and accused the CAPA of bearing responsibility. We use the CAPA as one of the most contested public organizations in Switzerland to study reputation management when a public authority is under severe attack and draw learnings for public organizations in similar situations in the future. Applying the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) in a content analysis to newspaper articles from the Germanspeaking part of Switzerland, we examine narratives uttered by CAPA representatives. Furthermore, by comparing the CAPA's communication with a similar case in the Romandie, we draw general lessons for public organizations that want to improve their reputation management and crisis communication. The results show how in German-speaking Switzerland, negative media reports increased sharply and caused lasting damage to the CAPA's reputation. By contrast, the scandal in French-speaking Switzerland did not lead to a full-blown crisis. Our findings underscore the need for public organizations to speak up when under attack, to build up the respective communication skills and resources and to employ positive narratives with shiny hero characters rather than negative narratives emphasizing villains. ABSTRAKTWie sieht das Reputationsmanagement einer Behörde unter Extrembedingungen aus? Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht die schweizerischen Kindes-und Erwachsenenschutzbehörden (KESB), die eine schwere Reputationskrise erlebten, nachdem eine Mutter im Jahr 2015 ihre beiden Kinder getötet und die KESB beschuldigt hatte, dafür verantwortlich zu sein. Wir verwenden die KESB als eine der am stärksten umstrittenen öffentlichen Organisationen in der Schweiz, um zu untersuchen, wie Reputationsmanagement aussieht, wenn eine öffentliche Behörde massiv angegriffen wird, und um Lehren für öffentliche Organisationen in der Zukunft zu ziehen, wenn sie sich in ähnlichen Situationen wiederfinden. Wir untersuchen Narrative von KESB-*Author affiliations can be found in the back matter of this article 52 Kuenzler et al.

What's the grand story? A macro‐narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

“…Finally, I conducted a standard mesolevel NPF analysis to provide the full picture of mechanisms from the macrolevel narratives all the way to the mesolevel policy debate. The data for this part of the analysis are based on the CAPP dataset (Kuenzler & Stauffer, 2021), which comprises all mesolevel narratives on the CAPP published between 2013 and 2016 in the same six newspaper outlets as mentioned above. Two researchers coded the articles based on the standard NPF codebook (Online Appendix 3).…”

Policy dimension: A new concept to distinguish substance from process in the Narrative Policy Framework

“…We choose an exploratory case for this first empirical examination of the policy dimension in the NPF, where a focusing event initiated debates among a multitude of individuals and groups in different venues. The chosen policy field—child and adult protection policy in Switzerland—has proven to be a rich case for narrative debates that are well amenable to NPF analyses (Hildbrand et al, 2020; Kuenzler, 2021, 2022; Kuenzler et al, 2022; Stauffer, 2022a, 2022b). 5…”

“…Regarding the data's intercoder reliability, all parliamentary text was independently coded by two researchers. The newspaper articles were coded in the context of a bigger database that comprises 848 articles in total (Kuenzler & Stauffer, 2021). In contrast to the parliamentary venue, here the coding workload was divided, with subsequent intercoder reliability tests on a subset of 90 articles.…”

“…The chosen policy field-child and adult protection policy in Switzerland-has proven to be a rich case for narrative debates that are well amenable to NPF analyses (Hildbrand et al, 2020;Kuenzler, 2021Kuenzler, , 2022Kuenzler et al, 2022;Stauffer, 2022aStauffer, , 2022b. 5 In the following, we first present the case and subsequently provide information on our data sources and methods.…”

“…As we want to explore a theoretical distinction that should be relevant for the NPF as a whole, the first investigation in a “familiar territory” with subsequent expansions into new areas permits the stepwise enhancement of complexity. Furthermore, the case definition differs from previous studies, with the empirical material featuring no (in the case of Hildbrand et al, 2020) or only partially overlaps with existing research (in the case of Kuenzler, 2021, 2022, Kuenzler et al, 2022, Stauffer, 2022a, 2022b). We elaborate on potential limits of generalizability and avenues for future expansions in Discussion and Conclusion sections.…”