Publication details
Forms of denial strategy in organization’s reactions to crises
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Denial is one of the possible strategies how organizations might react to crises. It is usually seen as lying at the end of a continuum of possible reactions to crises and opposite to an apology. Therefore, if an apology is defined by acknowledgment of guilt, denial is defined as an explicit declaration of rejection of guilt or responsibility (Kim et al. 2004). If an apology is seen as accommodative, denial is taken as a defensive response strategy (Coombs 1998). Although some differentiation of denials strategy had been already made (cf. Bennoit 1997), it seems that more precise criteria are needed to provide a better understanding of possible forms of denial. Denial can be in a direct form if there is a direct connection between support for and statement of denial, or in an indirect form, if there is a middle link between support for and statement of denial. Denial can also be general if the denial concerns the entire crises, or partial if denial concerns only parts of crises, personal if a denial is connected to a concrete member of organizations, or impersonal, if a denial is connected to an organization as an actor, and possibly some others. Thus, the goal of this paper is to provide a way to distinguish better different forms of denial. The Speech Act Theory and Toulmin (2003) approach will be used to achieve this goal. Especially Toulmin’s notion of logical types. Logical type, although not well-defined in Toulmin work itself (van Eemeren et al. 2014), is the set of ways in which it is legitimate to operate with it in the given context (cf. Ryle 2009: s. x) or simply logical types defines what process should be used to established proper use of the object of language |