Reputational impact of Covid‐19 pandemic management on World Health Organization among Indian public health professionals

• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Author: Suneel Gupta,Neerja Pande,Thangaraja Arumugam,M. A. Sanjeev
• Date: 01 February 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2842

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Reputational impact of Covid-19 pandemic management

on World Health Organization among Indian public health

professionals

Suneel Gupta

1

| Neerja Pande

2

| Thangaraja Arumugam

3

| M. A. Sanjeev

4

1

Department of Management Studies, SMS,

Lucknow, India

2

Business Communication, IIM-Lucknow,

Lucknow, India

3

Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai,

India

4

Department of Management, SCMHRD-SIU,

Pune, India

Correspondence

M. A. Sanjeev, Department of Management,

SCMHRD-SIU, Pune, India.

Email: masanjeev@rediffmail.com

Organizational reputation is critical for successful stakeholder engagement. A crisis

can affect the organizational reputation and alter stakeholder perception about orga-

nizations. The current study investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and

its management on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) reputation among

Indian public health professionals (PHPs). The study applies the situational crisis com-

munication theory (SCCT) model to investigate the reputational impact of the pan-

demic on WHO among the study subjects. The study results indicate that most

Indian PHPs attribute the current Pandemic to WHO. Their current reputation has

dropped compared to their earlier reputation among Indian PHPs. The same is

reflected in their behavioral intent, with the PHP's willingness to follow WHO guide-

lines on public health issues significantly reduced. The study also finds empirical sup-

port for the SCCT Model.

KEYWORDS

Covid-19, organizational reputation, pandemic, public health professionals, situational crisis

communication theory, World Health Organization

1|INTRODUCTION

Reputation is an intangible and non-replicable asset that can attract

and retain an organization's various stakeholders. Reputation lends

credibility to the organization and assures the stakeholders of its abil-

ity to serve them. Reputational loss drives the stakeholders away from

the organization (Bromley, 2000; Nguyen & Leblanc, 2001). Though a

reputational loss is a gradual process, crises can alter organizational

reputation overnight—effective management of crises is crucial to pre-

serving a corporate reputation for organizations of all ilk. Maintaining

good relations with the different stakeholders during a crisis involves

effective communication. Crisis makes communications challenging,

and ineffective crisis communication can damage an organization's

relationship with its public. Effective crisis communication in crisis

management has been an emergent topic in communication and pub-

lic relations research.

Though well researched,crisis communication studies have primar-

ily focused on commercial, political, or government organizations. The

study of health crises and the role of crisis communication in its

managementhave been lacking. It has been more than 18 months since

Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization

(WHO). There have been intensive efforts to control the pandemic,

albeit with mixed success.Though vaccines have been introduced, their

administration on a large scale will take longer. Resurgent infections

are still shuttingdown countries and affecting lives.Under such circum-

stances, WHO's role—mandated with managing worldwide health

emergencies-facesscrutiny. The verdict is still not out on the pandemic

crisis responsibility as the world grapples with follow-up waves of

infection and efforts to control them. However, two entities—WHO

and China, to whom the problemis attributed in varying degrees, have

been at the center of the crisis. The political institutions across, espe-

cially in the developed world, have held the twojointly responsible for

the crisis and attributed it to their negligent or deliberate actions

(Horsley, 2020; Mulier& Gretler, 2020;Silveretal.,2020). Thoughthe

framing of crisis responsibility has been clear from the developed

world's angle,the same is not true for the rest.

Received: 1 September 2021 Revised: 26 July 2022 Accepted: 7 August 2022

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2842

J Public Affairs. 2023;23:e2842. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of13

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2842