Image Restoration Strategies for the (mis-) handling of COVID – 19 Pandemic in Greece

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak all countries around the world used several kinds of response strategies to protect public health and control the outbreak. The main aim was to stop the disease from spreading into the community and put a pressure on the health system of the countries. However, severe measures like lockdown of cities and countries brought side-crises like economic pressure on the individuals, corporations and even the state itself. Although the Greek Government was considered to have managed the first phase of the crisis in March effectively, during the aftermath of the first phase, the complete opening of the economy and tourism, the lowering of measures leaded to the increase of new cases. The increased number of cases together with the late imposition of a new lockdown, leaded to the perception of a governmental failure. This perception mobilized direct or indirect image restoration strategies by officials of the Greek Government to maintain the positive image of their handling despite the general perceptions. This paper explores the image restoration strategies used by the prime minister of Greece for the handlings of the second phase of the pandemic in Greece. The methodology used is discourse analysis with the tools of Image Restoration Strategies by Benoit (1995) from October till December 2020.

Successful Strategies to Sustain Profits from Tourism Following a Hurricane

“…Hotel managers may use the information from the current study to integrate crisis and strategic management practices to sustain their businesses [6]. Previous researchers concluded that managers need the ability and skills to deal with the aftermaths of natural disaster to sustain their business sustainability [7,8].…”

“…The proper use of image restoration strategies is to avoid the blame game [7]; therefore, it is important to point out that there is a lasting risk associated with perceived negative events regardless of the mitigating factors [15]. The theory of image restoration holds that communicators who need to restore damaged reputations have five strategic options: denial, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective actions, and mortification [14], which provides organizational leaders with message strategies to sustain profits following a natural disaster such as a hurricane.…”

“…Mirvis [20] defined a crisis as a series of unforeseen events that come out of nowhere with no limitations on the level of chaos that can affect organizations. Many scholars pointed out that crises such as terrorist attacks, hurricanes, pandemics, tsunamis, earthquakes, power outages, and economic crises can occur with or without warning signs, and more importantly, they can quickly shatter societies and arouse trans-regional attention or lead an organization's reputation into a downward spiral which can significantly affect their profitability efforts (7,21,8,22,1]. Even though the magnitude of damage from crises is often unpredictable, reported weather conditions help give organizations and communities' warnings of an approaching event.…”

“…For example, researchers showed how the impact of Hurricane Katrina disrupted the economic infrastructure, image, and ability of New Orleans, Louisiana to be an attractive tourist destination immediately following the hurricane, causing businesses to close and loss of jobs [32,33,34]. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas power outage, Afghanistan Troop withdrawal, and other natural disasters like fires and earthquakes all poses risk to the tourism industry both locally and globally [7,35,1]. Destination marketers have used several strategies to reduce the negative impact of disasters or crises by highlighting areas not affected and conducting rapid cleanup and rebuilding efforts, which positively affected the perceptions of tourist destinations [9,24,32].…”