Scapegoating

In the context of crises, companies, organizations, government officials, and celebrities are frequently accused of wrongdoing. A common response is the intent to move away the blame for the crisis or parts of the crisis from themselves in order to reduce reputational damages and/or financial losses. This kind of crisis response is identified as a specific rhetorical strategy known as “scapegoating” or “shifting the blame” in the crisis management literature. Several typologies of crisis response strategies are available that include different forms of scapegoating. These typologies have their theoretical roots in corporate apologia, impression management, image restoration theory, and situational crisis communication theory. This article includes definitions and descriptions of different forms of scapegoating, the theoretical roots of scapegoating, and several examples and recommendations for the use of scapegoating as crisis response strategy. In most cases, scapegoating results in amplified reputational damages rather than protective effects for organizations using this strategy.

A scapegoat can be defined as a person, a group of persons, or an organization that is made to bear the blame for something negative in place of somebody else. From a psychological perspective, scapegoating refers to a hostile process in which people blame someone else for their own misbehavior or something else they perceive as negative. It may also refer to projections of negative feelings—often based on inappropriate accusations—toward a broader group of people not belonging to one's own group.

In the context of crisis management, scapegoating is identified as part of a broader set of crisis response strategies. Crisis response strategies are the verbal messages and nonverbal actions organizations use to address a crisis and the responsibility for the crisis. The scapegoating strategy refers to the intent of organizations accused of wrongdoing to blame persons or groups of persons outside the organization. In this case, scapegoating is part of a denial posture by which organizations try to remove any connection between themselves and the negative consequences of the crisis. In other cases, organizations have to bear parts of the responsibility but try to dissociate certain individuals (e.g., employees, the chief executive officer) or subsidiaries of a company from the company itself. They become scapegoats of the crisis as the organization claims that these individuals or subsidiaries acted on their own behalf and/or without official permission or knowledge of the organization. In this context, scapegoating is part of a differentiation posture of organizations.