Intervenciones cognitivas y cognitivo­conductuales en el  tratamiento del TDAH

By its very nature, criticism leveled against an organization is valuative; it argues that a company has violated a social convention by its actions. Such charges assert that organizational acts lack a basic level of competence or represent a disregard for stakeholders (Hearit, 1995a). Generally speaking, these accusations fall into four categories: accidents, product safety inci-dents, scandals and illegalities, and social irresponsibility (a model that ac-counts for the bulk of the different “forms” of response; for more on the ways scholars have organized the problem of contexts in order to account for ev-ery different type of context an organization might face, see Coombs, 1995, 1998; Hearit, 1999; Marcus & Goodman, 1991; Seeger et al., 2003). In ac-cidents—due to an act of God or a failure of human interaction with tech-nology—a misfortune has occurred that has caused harm to innocents or the environment. Although they are unexpected and typically one-time events, their causes tend to be systemic and the fault of the system (Perrow, 1984). This largely is related to the problem of complexity, because as

com-plexity increases so too do opportunities for accidents. Accident victims quickly secure legal counsel to pursue compensation for harms they have suffered (Lieberman, 1981). They leave available to apologists a wide range of rhetorical latitude in which to locate responsibility; such “causes” range from blaming “disgruntled employees” to labeling an accident “an act of God,” although American organizations are much more likely to locate blame in individuals at the switch rather than the Japanese tendency to lo-cate responsibility in those at top (Sugimoto, 1999).

Product safety incidents, on the other hand, appear to take just the oppo-site tact. Rather than being the result of a dramatic, one-time event, prod-uct safety incidents tend to coalesce slowly as similar revelations from disparate sources begin to surface, as was the situation with the Dow Corn-ing breast implant case (Brinson & Benoit, 1996). Like those injured by ac-cidents, victims of faulty products are likely to be represented by legal counsel. However, the causes of product safety incidents are more narrow, rooted not in systemic organizational weakness but instead in design flaws (Marcus & Goodman, 1991). Just as their causes are more limited, so too are potential explanations. This is the type of apologetic response most likely to be dictated by legal counsel.

Scandals and illegalities represent the third type of accusations leveled against organizations. In scandals and illegalities, a company’s image is dam-aged due to disclosures that the company “doesn’t play by the rules,” which results in public shame. Here, a company or corporate officials have engaged in controversial or illegal activities that are likely to bring social sanction, such as when the chief executive of the United Way was criticized for en-riching himself by misusing donor gifts (Shepard, 1992), or when E.F.

Hutton developed a complex scheme to defraud depositors of interest (Thackaberry, 1996). In scandals and illegalities, victims are less identifiable and typically less innocent (i.e., competitors). Apologetic responses in such cases are manifold, and tend to be limited only by the imagination of corpo-rate officers, although scapegoating key employees figures prominently in this calculus.

Finally, the last context in which crises can be classified is a form of social irresponsibility. In this context, an organization has done nothing illegal but rather is accused of having committed acts that are incongruent with cur-rent social values (Huxman & Bruce, 1995). One such example of this form of crisis is when an organization follows the flow of capital and relocates from one site to a location in which costs are cheaper, resulting in tremendous dis-placement in the lives of employees. Such was the allegation that brought a crisis for the Chrysler Corporation when it chose to close its aging Kenosha, Wisconsin, plant (Schultz & Seeger, 1991).

No matter what type of crises an organization faces—be they allegations of accidents, scandals and illegalities, product safety incidents, or social

irre-sponsibility—the fact of the matter is that apologiae have common ritualistic foundations. These ritualistic underpinnings present an occasion in which or-ganizations must come to grips with their wrongdoing, publicly address their guilt, and then request a return back into the social community. No matter how guilty an organization might be, it must nonetheless face the public criti-cism in a public context and deal with the public sanction that comes with its guilt. By offering an apology, organizations show their contrition and, coupled with corrective action, find themselves restored into the community.

Stances

Although organizations typically draw on common image-repair strategies, they tend to organize these strategies in a limited number of ways (Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 2004; Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Coombs & Schmidt, 2002; Hearit, 2001). Specifically, Hearit argued that organizations utilize one of five overall stances by which to deal with allegations of guilt. In other words, although organizations tend to use a multiplicity of strategies, their approach tends to feature one overall strategic stance. These stances in-clude denial, counterattack, differentiation, apology, and a legal stance.

In the denial stance, an organization maintains that it has done nothing wrong. In such an instance, the organization regularly relies on a strategy of denial to, in effect, claim “We’re not guilty.” Such was the stance taken by the makers of Tylenol in 1982, in response to the seven deaths that occurred in the greater Chicago area due to product tampering (Benoit & Lindsey, 1987; Fearn-Banks, 1996). A variant of this strategy is used by organizations that cannot deny committing the act but nevertheless find themselves in a position in which they can deny intent. Denial strategies often rely heavily on an opinion/knowledge dissociation.

In counterattack, a second stance that is really an offshoot of denial, an organization seeks to deal with the problem of its guilt by first denying the act and then directly attacking its accuser, claiming that the charges are false or come from malicious intent. The use of such a strategy reverses the direc-tion of the exchange in that the accused takes the moral high ground posi-tion of the accuser, and seeks to put the interrogator on the defensive (Hearit, 1996). Such was the tactic that GM used in defense of its C/K pick-ups, which Dateline NBC accused of being unsafe. GM challenged the newmagazine’s credibility by calling into question the ethics of its reporting and its use of a staged explosion of the trucks in order to make its point.

A third approach is that of differentiation. This stance probably accounts for the bulk of apologia. Here, organizations seek to distance themselves from their wrongdoing by attempting to redefine it, explain it, account for it, or justify it. The idea in doing so is that once key publics understand what happened, they will be less likely to condemn the organization and its

ac-tions. Such a strategy usually acknowledges some guilt, but often seeks to explain it away using an individual/group dissociation. This stance is illus-trated by the Toshiba Corporation after it was disclosed in 1987 that the Toshiba Machine Company sold top-secret milling equipment to the then-Soviet Union, which enabled the USSR to engineer quieter subma-rines, thus altering the strategic balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Toshiba quickly apologized and then dissociated the Toshiba name from the wrongdoing; it defined the wrong as having been perpetrated by the Toshiba Machine Company, which from then on it referenced only as TMC (Hearit, 1994).

A fourth strategy is that of apology, whereby organizations deal with their misconduct by acknowledging it and confessing responsibility. This often is coupled with a strategy of corrective action. Although some companies honestly and forthrightly issue a direct apology for their wrongdoing, most tend to release a statement of regret whereby they apologize for the harm that resulted but are careful not to assume responsibility (Hearit, 1995a).

AT&T directly apologized for a service interruption, for instance, and of-fered compensation, claiming that “apologies are not enough” (Benoit &

Brinson, 1994, p. 82). In this context, organizations use an act/essence dis-sociation to acknowledge that although an act did occur, it does not reflect the essence of an organization.

Finally, research has shown that a preferred method for many organi-zations accused of wrongdoing is to say nothing publicly, but instead to take a private, legal strategy, whereby they seek legal absolution of their guilt and ignore public concerns (Fitzpatrick & Rubin, 1995). In this sit-uation, due to liability costs an organization might incur, it instead seeks to avoid any public comment on its wrongdoing out of fear that words of conciliation or regret used to mitigate concerns in a public relations con-text could be turned against the organization in a legal one. In describing the particulars of this stance, Fitzpatrick and Rubin (1995) described the philosophy of communication of companies that (unfortunately) take this approach:

(1) say nothing; (2) say as little as possible and release it as quietly as possi-ble; (3) say as little as possible, citing privacy laws, company policy or sensi-tivity; (4) deny guilt and/or act indignant that such charges could possibly have been made; or (5) shift or, if necessary, share the blame with the plain-tiff …. [N]ever admit blame. (p. 22)

Perhaps the most famous example of this type of strategy was that taken by Ford Motor Company in defense of its Pinto in the 1970s. The company hunkered down for a long legal battle and made its defense primarily in the courtroom (Kaufmann et al., 1994).

Although there are many stances available to corporate apologists, the next section, which seeks to examine specific case studies of corporate wrongdoing, shows that a company’s response to allegations of wrongdoing is highly situation based; that is, the choices that apologists tend to make are highly contingent on the nature of the allegations. These organizations then choose a stance that is most likely to result in absolution of their guilt. This is shown in analyses of the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, manufac-turers Firestone and Ford, and the not-for-profit organization the American Red Cross.

CASE STUDIES OF CORPORATE