Apologia Theory

Crisis Situations

The study of apologetic communication by and large has focused on understanding the situation that necessitates an apologia as well as explicating the message strategies that constitute this form of address. As to the situation that necessitates an apologia, B. L. Ware and Wil A. Linkugel defined an apologia as a response to “the questioning of a man's moral nature, motives, or reputation” (1973, p. 274). In dealing with more organizational contexts, H. R. Ryan has expanded the concept to include allegations against not just character but also the policies of individuals and institutions. Given that there exists a “legitimacy gap” between societal expectations for corporate behavior and the reality of how such organizations are seen to act, the situation that necessitates an apologia is better conceptualized as a legitimation crisis where an apologia is needed because organizational actions are seen to have violated commonly held public values, [Page 39]resulting in public animosity and antipathy toward the company. Such hostility takes the form of social sanctions whereby media, consumers, and key opinion leaders criticize said organizational actions.

Apologia Strategies

As to the substance of a corporate apologia, scholars have spent a great deal of time and effort to articulate the different message strategies used by organizations. One such strategy is to deny—to reject charges by characterizing them as false. Those not in a position to deny that they committed an act often find it useful to deny that they intended to do so, for intent is a key factor in gauging culpability. Concomitantly, bolstering constitutes an indentificational strategy that focuses on the strength and benefits of a past relationship. One way that corporations bolster is to remind constituents of the number of jobs they bring to a community.

Strategies of redefinition are a major category with which apologists are able to deal with the public perception of their guilt. Differentiation is one strategy, in which a narrow context is redefined into a broader one. An additional strategy of redefinition is transcendence. Transcendence differs from differentiation in that the redefinition is to a broader, more abstract context and often involves a religious dimension. Other strategies of redefinition include provocation, where an organization claims that it simply reacted to the hostilities of another; the use of defeasibility, where corporate officers claim that forces beyond their control were at work; and the good-intentions strategy, where a company claims it had good intentions in creating a specific policy that only recently has faced criticism. Finally, in minimization, an organization seeks to lessen its responsibility by claiming that the problem is actually small or insignificant.

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