Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1544
• Author: Jorge Tiago Martins,Christopher Painter
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Organisational communication management during the

Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in

attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

Christopher Painter |Jorge Tiago Martins

Information School, University of Sheffield,

Sheffield, UK

Correspondence

Jorge Tiago Martins, Information School,

University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 211

Portobello Street, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK

Email: jorge.martins@sheffield.ac.uk.

The discovery in September 2015 of diesel emissions software cheat technology in Volkswagen

(VW) cars initiated a process of organisational crisis management and damage limitation by VW,

reflected inthe contemporaneous intensive production of public information statements, including

press releases, statements to shareholders and investors, and transcripts of oral evidence. Through

taking stock of a selection of these public information statements, this article examines the

organisational communication management strategies employed to respond to the crisis situation,

making an integrated use of attribution, crisis management, and information orientation theories

as an interpretive lens. An interpretivist, hermeneutic approach was used to carry out qualitative

content analysis on selected statements issued by VW. Theanalysis reveals that there is a connec-

tion betweenstatements relating to attribution and statements relating to informationorientation,

at the time of the crisis and in preparingfuture action. Prioritiesfor action form part of the overall

crisis management and image restoration approach. Proposed changes in information orientation

constitute a key dimension of the company's public response to mitigate the offensiveness of the

crisis. Theanalysis performed demonstrates the applicability ofthe proposed integrationof attribu-

tion, crisis management, image restoration, and information orientation theories to better under-

stand and explain how large corporations respond publicly to organisational crisis episodes, more

specificallythe ways in which attributions, crisis management, and imagerestoration strategiesare

related to aspects of information orientationas both components and consequences of the crisis.

1|INTRODUCTION

On September 18, 2015, the German automotive company Volkswagen

AG (VW) received a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act from the

United States Environmental ProtectionAgency.Ithadbeenfoundthat

certain diesel engines in cars manufactured by VW contained a piece of

software—a“defeat device”—that meant certain emission controls were

only activated during laboratory testing (Volkswagen, 2016a, 2016b,

2016c, 2016e). The result of this is that in real world conditions, some

engines were exceeding U.S. emission limits “by a factor of 15 to 35”(Cen-

ter for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions, 2014). VW admitted that,

unbeknown to the general public, about 11 million cars worldwide were

fitted with the device (Volkswagen, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d,

2015e, 2015f, 2015g, 2015h, 2015i, 2015j, 2015k, 2015l, 2015m, 2015o).

What ensued from this discovery configures a situation of

organisational crisis for VW, particularly as the series of events that

unfolded was “specific, unexpected, and non‐routine”(Seeger,Sellnow,

& Ulmer, 2003), created uncertainty and mistrust, and presented a

threat to its brand reputation and commercial goals. In an appraisal of

the kinds of threats organisational crisis incidents engender, Coombs

(2007a) proposes that the greatest damage occurs at the levels of pub-

lic safety, financial loss, and reputation loss. Both these definitions indi-

cate that VW faced a situation of crisis. Financial loss is shown as the

company set aside €16.2 billion to deal with the emissions crisis. This

led to VW making an annual loss in 2015 of €4.1 billion—its first annual

loss in over 20 years (Volkswagen, 2016d). Reputation loss is shown as,

by December 2015, sales of VW branded cars had dropped by 20%

(Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, 2015). Muller, 2016,

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited.

© 2017 The Authors Knowledge and Process Management Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Received: 12 April 2017 Accepted: 13 April 2017

DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1544

204 Knowl Process Manag. 2017;24:204–218.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm