AUDIENCE SUPPORT DECISIONS IN IN THE AFTERMATH OF A SOCIAL SCANDAL: THE ROLES OF LEGITIMACY AND REPUTATION

Abstract

Constituent audience evaluations and decisions regarding whether to continue to support a corporation after it has been perceived as culpable for socially irresponsible behaviour following corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) scandals are coin of the realm in selecting which firms (or which parts of a firm) will be able to survive a CSI-scandal. Research has largely taken for granted that CSI leads to the loss of corporate legitimacy and, consequently, of constituent audience support. Though legitimacy may be reconstructed, empirics suggest this is a necessary but insufficient condition for the maintenance of audience support. Adopting the evaluators’ perspective, this study focuses on the different social evaluations audiences may express following corporate scandals. In the post-scandal phase, both legitimacy and reputation seem to emerge as significant aspects of audience evaluation. Due to the cognitive and social specificities connected to the dynamics of legitimacy and reputation creation, maintenance and restoration, this paper proposes that there is a specific sequence and interplay between the two forms of social evaluation following social scandals.