When should organizations apologize in times of crises? : Examining how the timing of apologies, prior reputation and procedural justice influence stakeholders’ perceptions, attitudes and behavioral responses.

Abstract

When an organization commits a transgression, its stakeholders would expect the organization to respond and offer an account to its actions. Issuing an apology is one such response. The question remains: In times of crisis, especially one when the organization is seen to be at fault, when should the organization apologize? To explore this, the authors have developed a framework called the Apology Alignment Model. This model first contextualize apology in a crisis life cycle. The consequential impact of the timing of the utterance of apology is explored by borrowing insights from procedural justice (Ha & Jang, 2009) and prior organizational reputation (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). The model was empirically tested in an experimental context where data was obtained from students from a large research-intensive university. Our findings show that prompt apologies in an early phase, along with high prior reputation and high procedural justice in place result in the most favorable stakeholders’ perceptions, attitudes and behavioural responses; and significant interaction effects between the independent variables provided meaningful information for practitioners to effectively understand the potential consequences of their response.