企业危机下社交媒体印象管理策略的选择和效果:基于组态视角的跨案例研究OACHSSCD

A company's reputation can be swiftly destroyed by corporate online firestorms,and social media even amplifies this detrimental effect.Studies based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory mainly focus on impression management tactics aligned with the responsibility attribution in crisis;yet,conflicting results exist concerning the effectiveness of these tactics,failing to provide appropriate guidance for crisis management practice.This paper proposes,from a configurational perspective,that the coupling effect between the tactics and more crisis characterizations should be taken into account when investigating the effectiveness of impression management tactics,in addition to their matching with responsibility attribution.In this study,qualitative comparative analysis(QCA)was carried out on 25 corporate crisis cases,and textual analysis was used to mine consumer sentiment and impression management tactics based on social media.With consumer sentiment as the outcome variable and impression management tactics and crisis characterizations being as the antecedent variable,this study explored the selection and effectiveness of impression management tactics under crisis events with different characteristics. In the first part,this paper identified three advances compared with previous research first,textual mining was used to analyze the consumer sentiment behind the comments on crisis events,providing a deeper understanding of media crisis;second,event strength was measured to track the impact of the corporate crisis;third,considering asymmetric causality,QCA can be utilized to explore different configurations of crisis characterizations and impression management tactics,and their impacts on consumer sentiment. In the second part,this paper selected 25 companies and their crisis cases from the Top 100 Chinese Internet Enterprises List released by the Internet Society of China from 2019 to 2021 and the Ranking of Chinese Listed Retail Enterprises released by linkshop.com in 2021.Customers' comments on Weibo concerning each case have been collected,and textual mining was used to code the corresponding variables(crisis characterizations,consumer sentiment,and impression management tactics). In the third part,QCA and robustness tests was conducted on 25 corporate crisis cases.The results point to the possibility of a non-linear relationship between crisis characterizations and consumer sentiment as well as between impression management tactics and consumer sentiment.According to the results,there are five kinds of configurations that lead to negative consumer sentiment and five kinds of configurations that lead to positive consumer sentiment. In the fourth part,in-depth discussions were carried out in the context of the crisis cases,combining the results of QCA.The findings are as follows:a)The investigation of crisis situations should consider the coupling effect of multiple crisis characterizations,such as responsibility attribution,crisis history,and event strength in order to determine the most appropriate impression management tactics.b)When the firm is at fault with negative history,it is challenging to avoid negative consumer sentiment regardless of the level of event strength.Consequently,it is imperative to minimize the level of responsibility attribution by the Event Statement and Blame-recognition Tactics,retaining the organization's reputation in the long term.c)When the firm is at fault with high event strength but no negative history,the Event Statement and Blame-recognition Tactics and the Ingratiating Tactics should be taken as a configuration to alleviate the negative consumer sentiment;however,when the firm is at fault with high event strength and negative history,the configuration of the Ingratiating Tactics and the Positive Image Constructing Tactics will cause the consumers to view the company as hypocritical.Furthermore,the Silence Tactics will not be effective.d)When the firm is not at fault and has no negative history,the Negative Associations Downplaying Tactics is enough to alleviate the negative consumer sentiment,even the event strength is high.However,if the firm has negative history,the Negative Associations Downplaying Tactics is no longer applicable.In such a situation,the Silence Tactics can keep the negative influence from spreading,and the assertive impression management tactics will create a favorable image and reshape the company's reputation,turning the crisis into an opportunity. Theoretically,this paper offers fresh insights into the effectiveness of crisis impression management tactics based on Configurational Theory,explaining the complex causal relationships between the antecedents and consumer sentiment.Besides,textual mining was employed to analyze the consumer sentiment on social media so as to select better impression management tactics.In practice,this paper calls on companies to emphasize the long-term maintenance of reputation.At the same time,the results of this paper can help companies select effective impression management tactics during a crisis.