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FrancoAngeli Journals

Articles

No. 1 (2020)

How CEOs respond to crisis: a comparison of rhetorical strategies during Coronavirus pandemic outbreak

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/cgrds1-2020oa10116
Submitted
luglio 3, 2020
Published
2020-11-25

Abstract

Coming out of an exogenous company crisis requires rebuilding the trust of skeptical, disappointed or unsatisfied stakeholders. This study aims to analyze how the CEOs rhetorical strategies employed by the most affected industries after the worldwide outbreak of Covid-19 suddenly changed at the beginning of 2020. The virus diffusion all over the world has forced these companies (airlines, railroads, food services, hotels, casinos & resorts) to incur in unexpected costs and a rapid profit loss, thus raising their stakeholders’ concerns about firms’ ability to face this crisis. By comparing CEO letters to shareholders, included in the 2019 and 2020 proxy statements, we carried out a content analysis of the rhetorical strategies adopted to face up to the outbreak of a global crisis. Results show that the shareholders letters that explicitly refer to the virus tend to score lower in terms of sentiment and higher in terms of supportiveness, compared with the letters that do not directly refer to the virus topic. The study offers key contributions for CEOs on how to communicate an unexpected and rapid change of growth perspectives for their companies.

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