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This research analyzes the effectiveness of a CEO spokesperson’s affiliation to a social group during a crisis. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether a group affiliation with a large heterogeneous group, such as parents, can engender similarly positive effects in members of the same social category, compared with a smaller distinctive group, here an amateur sports community. An experimental study using a product harm crisis by a bicycle manufacturer as stimulus was conducted to answer the research question. The results reveal positive effects when the CEO signaled his/her affiliation with a social group that is distinctive and rather homogenous. In this case, corporate trustworthiness, purchase intentions, and abstaining from negative word-of-mouth are directly impacted by stakeholders’ identification with the CEO spokesperson, and indirectly through identification with the CEO and message credibility. However, when the CEO spokesperson communicated his/her affiliation with a large and heterogeneous group, in this case parents, the company did not benefit. The results yield implications for both crisis communication research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media provide numerous possibilities for consumers and other stakeholders to voice their complaints about organizations in public. While this can damage the reputation of an organization, effectively handling complaints also bears considerable opportunities to win back complainants and to win over observers of the interaction. This study analyzes how large companies handle complaints on their Facebook and Twitter pages. Results reveal that the companies are not fully embracing the opportunities of social media to demonstrate their willingness to interact with and assist their stakeholders. Organizational responsiveness is only moderate, and companies often try to divert complainants away from the social network site. The most frequently applied response strategy is asking complainants for further information which does not appease complainants. Response strategies that foster complaint satisfaction are used less often. They comprise offering a corrective action, connecting the complainant with someone who can provide a problem solution and thanking the complainant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ethical problems and resources addressed in a survey among 2324 PR managers. • PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than 8 years ago. • Concerns regarding bots, big data, social media influencers and sponsored content. • Personal values and beliefs most important resource for dealing with moral issues. Digital communication tools and practices improve the spread and impact of organisational messages. Quite often, however, they also pose moral problems. This article examines how often public relations practitioners encounter moral issues in their day-to-day work, how they assess digital communication tools and practices in terms of ethics, and the resources on which they rely to tackle moral challenges. Four research questions were addressed in an online survey among 2,324 practitioners who work in PR departments of organisations or in PR agencies across Europe. Results show that PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than they have faced in the past. Regarding digital communication tools and practices, they report moral concerns especially related to using bots, exploiting personal data for big-data analyses, paying social media influencers, and using sponsored content. Personal values and beliefs are the most important resource for dealing with moral issues—whether because only a minority of practitioners has participated in any formal ethics training within the past three years, or because existing ethical guidelines are outdated. Results call for the development of ethical guidelines that can provide explicit advice in the area of digital communication. Furthermore, structured training programs and ethics courses in graduate programs are needed to enhance practitioners' ethical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]