Sanne Frandsen
Assistant head Organization, Department of Business Administration
Who is responsible—and for what? An antenarrative perspective on organizational members’ crisis sensemaking of responsibility during a corporate scandal
Author
Summary, in English
We investigate organizational members’ crisis sensemaking and construction of
responsibility at the peak of a corporate scandal. We focus on those organizational
members, who are not directly involved in the scandal but are still affected by it, as they
are questioned about their collective and moral responsibility for being members of an
organization that has engaged in wrongdoing. Our study is based on interviews with and
observations of frontline employees and their managers at Danske Bank, a bank involved
in a money laundering scandal of historical magnitude. We propose an antenarrative
crisis sensemaking framework that enables us to contribute to the literature on crisis
sensemaking in two significant ways. First, we advance existing knowledge on crisis
sensemaking by focusing on the less visible, unfinished, fragmented, and polyphonic
sensemaking of organizational members during a corporate scandal. Second, we
demonstrate that organizational members at the peak of a scandal place responsibility
in different timespaces as they construct others’ and their own responsibility both
retrospectively and prospectively.
responsibility at the peak of a corporate scandal. We focus on those organizational
members, who are not directly involved in the scandal but are still affected by it, as they
are questioned about their collective and moral responsibility for being members of an
organization that has engaged in wrongdoing. Our study is based on interviews with and
observations of frontline employees and their managers at Danske Bank, a bank involved
in a money laundering scandal of historical magnitude. We propose an antenarrative
crisis sensemaking framework that enables us to contribute to the literature on crisis
sensemaking in two significant ways. First, we advance existing knowledge on crisis
sensemaking by focusing on the less visible, unfinished, fragmented, and polyphonic
sensemaking of organizational members during a corporate scandal. Second, we
demonstrate that organizational members at the peak of a scandal place responsibility
in different timespaces as they construct others’ and their own responsibility both
retrospectively and prospectively.
Department/s
- Department of Business Administration
- Organizational Studies
Publishing year
2023
Language
English
Publication/Series
Human Relations
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- antenarrative, corporate scandals, crisis sensemaking, responsibility, space, storytelling, time
Status
Epub
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0018-7267