Crying with victims during crisis : how CEO's emoting impact stakeholders' perception of organization

• Main Authors: Vikneshwaran, Mano, Yeo, Yanping, Lee, Hui Zyi, Xu, Jinghui
• Other Authors: Augustine Pang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication::Organizational communication; DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Affection and emotion
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52904
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Crises often occur in the form of unexpected events which evoke emotional experiences for those involved. Though crisis research has largely focused on verbal strategies in responding to a crisis, how they are delivered is arguably crucial too. While crisis literature show that stakeholders experience emotional upheavals during crises, is it possible that organizations can be emotionally affected as well? If so, can organizational leaders, like the CEO, then freely express emotions such as sobbing when communicating with stakeholders? The authors developed a CEO Emoting Model to explore the influence of expressed affect by the CEO on stakeholder perceptions of the CEO and the organization. Two studies were undertaken in the form of participant observation and an experimental study involving 302 participants. Findings show that organizations do express affect during crises via verbal and nonverbal cues, and that such affect cues significantly influence stakeholders’ positive behavioural intentions and how they perceive the CEO and the organization. However, these effects are highly influenced by the gender of the CEO and severity of the crisis. The expression of affect by the CEO was also found to elicit stronger empathetic emotions from stakeholders. These findings present significant implications in how practitioners should counsel their CEO in terms of emotional display or emotional constraint when addressing their stakeholders during crises.