When Moral Outrage Strikes: Managing Stakeholders’ Crisis Responses During an Organizational Scansis

Ground in the moral outrage, scansis management, and crisis leadership literature, this study examines how scansis type (internal vs. external victims), organizational response strategy (apology vs. atonement vs. strategic silence), and age difference shape stakeholders’ moral outrage in response to a scansis-stricken organization. The researchers conducted a 2 × 3 between-subjects online experiment among U.S. adults (n = 210) to examine the effects of scansis type and organizational adjusting response type on participants’ emotional reaction, retaliation intention, perceived leadership integrity, perceived ethics, organizational reputation, and forgiveness intention, followed by analyses by age group to examine any impact of individual difference in their crisis responses. The results provide implications for advancing the understanding of scansis in terms of its nature and relative effects of different adjusting response strategies, and the impact of generational differences. Implications for strategic communication and ethical crisis leadership research and practice are discussed.