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When companies face a crisis, they sometimes deliver blame-shifting communications, trying to shift blame onto another actor to protect their reputation. While previous research has considered how different features of the message affect its persuasiveness, little is known about whether specific senders can blame more effectively. This paper aims to contribute to research in this domain through an investigation of the sender’s social perception as a critical moderator to the persuasiveness of blame shifting.

The authors conduct four between-subjects scenario experiments to test the research hypotheses. In each experiment, participants are presented with a realistic crisis scenario and the crisis communications delivered by the company. The authors assess the extent to which perceptions of the sender influence the message’s ability to reduce negative word-of-mouth intentions and to increase purchase intentions.

The authors show that blame shifting is more likely to be effective when deployed by senders that are small (Study 1) or have a positive CSR track record (Study 2). Furthermore, The authors find that even large senders can successfully deploy blame shifting if they can benefit from being known for their CSR programs (Study 3). Finally, the authors show that the effect of blame shifting depends on the receiver’s level of concern about the crisis: stakeholders significantly concerned by the crisis reject blame-shifting communications (Study 4).

Further research should examine the impact of information about brand competence on blame-shifting effectiveness. Further research is also needed to explore sender effects for other defensive crisis communication strategies such as denial or the use of excuses or justifications.

The study offers critical information for marketers considering the use of defensive crisis communications strategies such as blame shifting.

The study extends the understanding of how sender effects influence blame-shifting communications. The analysis allows us to clarify why this strategy is effective for certain senders and certain receivers while, for others, it tends to backfire. Blame shifting backfires for large senders unless they can boast a strong CSR record.

Political parties frequently engage in exclusionary narratives resulting in a game of blame-shifting. While this is understandably part of political life, claiming responsibility is decreasing and blame attribution is increasing in times of crisis as political actors seek to minimise political cost and rally supporters. Crises also create fertile ground for polarisation as affected citizens look for quick solutions and are driven to the extremes of the political spectrum. That effect has been demonstrated in Greece (Capelos & Exadaktylos, 2017; Vasilopoulou et al., 2014): political parties in the first years of the Greek financial crisis (2009–2012) engaged in an endless game of blame-shifting and exclusion, which was replicated within opinion pieces within mainstream press. This resulted in the polarisation of society with new political cleavages emerging, most notably on the pro/antiausterity divide. Within the context of this divide populist rhetoric assisted exclusion as the two sides tried to demarcate boundaries, identify allies and enemies and reinforce a ‘Them’ vs ‘Us’ dichotomy to consolidate their identities.

This chapter assesses how embedded this divide has become in setting up the electoral campaigns for the 2019 General Election between the two main contenders, Syriza and New Democracy in the way they projected their political narrative in the public sphere. Using substantive content analysis of framing, this chapter collected opinion pieces written from the day the election was announced (26 May) to day after the result (8 July) in two newspapers: New Democracy–leaning Kathimerini and Syriza-leaning Avgi. This chapter identified the blame frames of the two sides and assessed polarisation by coding for the tone of references using an exclusivity index as developed by Vasilopoulou et al. (2014). The findings suggest that both newspapers engaged in a race of blame, bringing the political debate to the forefront and ensuring that polarisation was transferred into the public sphere, consolidating the ‘them’ vs ‘us’ divide.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the complexity of the network governance setting affects accountability practices. The authors pay particular attention to the organizational characteristics that may enable a common understanding of multiple accountability relationships, or lead to problems in reconciling competing forms of accountability, thereby appearing as blame game-type behavior.

The authors conducted a case study with 31 semi-structured interviews in a Finnish health care organization (FHC) that offers basic public health care services. The organization represents a co-operative arrangement with the main city and three smaller municipalities. The FHC has faced difficulties in balancing budget constraints with the provision of statutory care to citizens. This case is analyzed with the help of theories relating to accountability, the blame game, and dialogue.

The authors found that in the FHC operating under austerity constraints, attempts to reconcile financial, professional, and democratic accountability were made but, instead of dialogue and consensus, the different stakeholder groups resorted to defensive tactics in order to protect their resources, position, or sense of professional obligation. The authors suggest that in a context of network governance, accompanied by an increasing emphasis on financial accountability, organizational practices are susceptible to conflicting accountabilities and behavior characterized in this paper as a blame game.

The study contributes to the empirical studies on accountability in the new public governance context by analyzing the complex accountability relations between stakeholder groups with different agendas. The authors suggest organizational characteristics that may exacerbate conflicts between different stakeholder groups and prevent constructive dialogue. Furthermore, the study analyzes the composition of democratic accountability within the studied organization.

The study examines how calculative practices and accountability appear in a rural community of marginalised people in Egypt who depend on jasmine plantations that contribute to the production of global essences.

The data were collected from various sources, namely conversations with villagers, documents and relevant videos and news available on social media and the Internet. This study draws on the concepts of social accountability, the politics of blame avoidance and using calculative practices as a language to explain accountability in context.

The author found a lack of accountability on the part of the government and business owners, with serious implications for the livelihoods of people in a community that has been wholly dependent on jasmine plantations for a century. Power holders have deployed a blame-shifting game to avoid social responsibility. In response, calculative practices rather than advanced accounting tools are used by the poor in the community to induce power holders to be accountable.

The findings of this study show that authorities need to take proactive steps to address the disadvantaged position of powerless people in the lower echelons of society, recognising their accountability for those people.

This paper enhances the understanding of the status of calculative practices and accountability in a community of marginalised people who contribute to the production of global commodities. The paper also enhances the understanding of what goes on behind the scenes with popular and prestigious commodities, whose development is initiated in poor countries, with the end product marketed in rich Western countries.

This study aims to explore the use of a double diamond design method to engage the industry in a sector-wide response to the issues of food waste as constructed by consumers. This particular design method is achieved by an exploration of a collective intelligence-participatory design (CIPD) project to engage industry participants in understanding and responding to consumers’ perceptions of the role of packaging in reducing food waste.

Using the UK Design Council’s double diamond design method as a guiding conceptual principle, the project recruited industry participants from medium to large food businesses across various food categories. Two scoping workshops with industry were held prior to the initiation of a 12-stage project (n = 57), and then two industry workshops were held (n = 4 and 14). Eighty participants completed an online qualitative survey, and 23 industry participants took part in a Think Tank Sprint Series. The Think Tanks used participatory design approaches to understand barriers and opportunities for change within food industry sub-sectors and test the feasibility and acceptability of package designs to reduce consumer waste.

For CIPD to work for complex problems involving industry, it is vital that stakeholders across macro- and micro-subsystems are involved and that adequate time is allowed to address that complexity. Using both the right tools for engagement and the involvement of the right mix of representatives across various sectors of industry is critical to reducing blame shift. The process of divergence and convergence allowed clear insight into the long-term multi-pronged approach needed for the complex problem.

Participatory design has been useful within various behaviour change settings. This paper has demonstrated the application of the double diamond model in a social marketing setting, adding value to an industry-wide project that included government, peak bodies, manufacturing and production and retailers.

This paper aims to better understand why neoliberal governance is so resilient to the crises that frequently affect all or part of the economy.

The argument of this paper relies on a macroanalysis of discourses surrounding the Global Financial Crisis.

Drawing on Girard and Foucault’s work, this paper argues that the resilience of neoliberalism partly ensues from the proclivity of this mode of governing to foster, for reasons that this paper seeks to highlight, spontaneous and widespread processes of scapegoating in times of turmoil. As a consequence of these processes, crises often are collectively construed as resulting from frauds: the blame is focused on specific actors whose lack of morality is denounced, and this individualizing line of interpretation protects the regime from systemic questioning.

Particular actors, rather than the system itself, are made accountable when things go wrong. Consequences are paramount. Today’s political economy is characterized with a proclivity toward social reproduction. While substantive change is possible in theory, considerable challenges are involved in practice in overcoming the dominance of neoliberalism in society.

Although Girard’s work has exerted significant influence over a number of disciplines in the social sciences, his ideas have not yet been widely used in governance and accountability-related research. Anthropological theorizations – such as those proposed by Girard – are valuable in providing us with a sense of how power develops in the economy.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on data from interviews with six Italian migrant service providers and media stories in Italy and Australia to weave a comparative snapshot of the plight of precarious migrant and refugee communities in these two countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article draws attention to prejudicial shortcomings towards vulnerable migrant communities enacted by the states of Italy and Australia in response to COVID-19.

While the unequal ecology of the pandemic has flared up the need for the State to strengthen participation and inclusion policies, it has also provided opportunities to foreground the disadvantages vulnerable communities face that also demand policy attention and sustained funding. Governments in migrant-receiving countries like Australia and Italy need to articulate culturally sensitive and inclusive responses that foreground agencies give vulnerable migrants, asylum seekers and refugees clear, supportive messages of solidarity leading to practical solutions.

This paper relays preliminary data from the coalface (migrant service providers) and media as the pandemic evolved in the two countries, whose support mechanisms had never before been critically compared and evaluated through the lens of racial inequality in the face of a health and social crisis.

Image restoration theory has become a dominant paradigm for examining corporate communication in times of crises. However, much insight gleaned from scholarly research in this area remains descriptive – simply recounting how certain corporations or companies communicated during times of crisis – rather than prescriptive. Therefore, to provide more direct guidance to corporations and organizations, this paper offers the first empirical test of Benoit's five image restoration strategies vis‐à‐vis each other simultaneously within the context of a single crisis situation.

An experimental investigation that measures consumers' reactions to differentially manipulated crisis‐communication messages. Methods of data analysis include ANOVA and post hoc comparisons of means.

Results indicate that the strategy of reducing the offensiveness of the event consistently led to higher reputation‐related perceptions of a company than did the other four strategies – denial, evasion of responsibility, corrective action, and mortification – when implemented during a product‐harm crisis situation.

Findings have direct implications for corporate communicators and the organizations they represent in developing and implementing crisis‐communication strategies.

This paper offers an original test of all image restoration strategies within the context of a single crisis. In addition to providing clearer guidelines to practitioners, such inquiry also accelerates the transfer of image restoration theory from the realm of retrospection and description to that of prescription and inference.