Who is responsible—and for what? An antenarrative perspective on organizational members’ crisis sensemaking of responsibility during a corporate scandal

• We investigate organizational members’ crisis sensemaking and construction ofresponsibility at the peak of a corporate scandal. We focus on those organizationalmembers, who are not directly involved in the scandal but are still affected by it, as theyare questioned about their collective and moral responsibility for being members of anorganization that has engaged in wrongdoing. Our study is based on interviews with andobservations of frontline employees and their managers at Danske Bank, a bank involvedin a money laundering scandal of historical magnitude. We propose an antenarrativecrisis sensemaking framework that enables us to contribute to the literature on crisissensemaking in two significant ways. First, we advance existing knowledge on crisissensemaking by focusing on the less visible, unfinished, fragmented, and polyphonicsensemaking of organizational members during a corporate scandal. Second, wedemonstrate that organizational members at the peak of a scandal place responsibilityin different timespaces as they construct others’ and their own responsibility bothretrospectively and prospectively.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

antenarrative, corporate scandals, crisis sensemaking, responsibility, space, storytelling, time

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)