Large‐Scale Social Protest: A Business Risk and a Bureaucratic Opportunity

Abstract

The public versus private nature of organizations influences their goals, processes, and employee values. However, existing studies have not analyzed whether and how the public nature of organizations shapes their responses to concrete social pressures. This article takes a first step toward addressing this gap by comparing the communication strategies of public organizations and businesses in response to large‐scale social protests. Specifically, we conceptualize, theorize, and empirically analyze the communication strategies of 100 organizations in response to large‐scale social protests that took place in Israel during 2011. We find that in response to these protests, public organizations tended to employ a “positive‐visibility” strategy, whereas businesses were inclined to keep a “low public profile.” We associate these different communication strategies with the relatively benign consequences of large‐scale social protests for public organizations compared with their high costs for businesses.

Strategic communication by regulatory agencies as a form of reputation management: A strategic agenda

“…Agencies may unilaterally opt for this strategy or find themselves under political pressures to keep silent. Regulatory talk ranges from an active blame‐avoidance strategy (Hood et al 2009), by engaging in problem denial, problem admission, and responsibility denial, or admission, to a deliberate credit‐claiming strategy (Neu et al 1998; Highhouse et al 2009; Hood 2011) that is intended to communicate favourable information about the agency's activities and outputs (Gilad et al 2016, p. 373). Gilad et al (2016), for example, detail how, in response to the 2011 social protest in Israel, public organizations tended to employ a ‘positive‐visibility’ strategy involving the communication of favourable information regarding the agency, whereas businesses were inclined to avoid blame by maintaining a ‘low public profile’.…”

Enhancing democracy via bureaucracy: Senior managers' social identities and motivation for policy change

“…We drew our sample of interviewees from 11 central‐government ministries, which manifested diversity in terms of organizational size and policy domains, and in their centrality to the protest agenda as gauged in our previous study (Gilad et al, ). We also measured interviewees' own perceptions of the relevance of the protest agenda to their ministries' domains.…”

“…Two bodies of empirical research allude to this possibility. First, reputation theory (Carpenter, ) suggests that bureaucracies strike a balance between pursuing and guarding their missions and reputations and responsiveness to salient public pressures (e.g., Busuioc, ; Busuioc & Lodge, ; Gilad, ; Gilad, Alon‐Barkat, & Braverman, ; Maor, ; Maor & Sulitzeanu‐Kenan, ). These studies assume that survival concerns shape bureaucracies' responsiveness to the public.…”

Theorizing Business and Local Peacebuilding Through the “Footprints of Peace” Coffee Project in Rural Colombia

“…This positive impact was predicated upon specific characteristics of implementation, project design, and business reputation. More importantly, at the managerial level, FNC looked beyond risk to see how FOP could offer reputational rewards , similar to how some government entities see peacebuilding activities (Gilad, Alon-Barkat, & Braverman, 2016), and how progressive CSR can improve public perceptions of firms (Sirsly & Lvina, 2019). Further study of such relationships at the company level of analysis would yield additional insights regarding the uniqueness of this finding.…”