Companies seem to put lots of effort into forgetting the
scandal in the longer term.
(September 25, 2015) Researchers
have found that large corporations often try to get over their corporate
irresponsibility by first asking for forgiveness and then silencing their
stakeholders. They also remove traces that may act as a reminder of the
scandal. If Volkswagen does what many other corporations have previously done
in similar cases, it may not learn to avoid its mistakes - and it may repeat
the same mistake later on.
According to researchers at Aalto University in Finland and
Cass Business School in the UK, corporations often succeed in playing down
large instances of corporate irresponsibilities quickly by using several
methods. Companies downplay the harm that an event has caused, shift the blame
onto someone else and shift attention away from the scandal to another issue.
According to the researchers, at the moment, Volkswagen as a company is looking
to heap the blame for a collective failure onto the shoulders of a few
individuals - such as a CEO that already resigned.
Companies also seem to put lots of effort into forgetting
the scandal in the longer term. The researchers found companies getrid of
people who might remember what went wrong, by gagging them, pushing them out of
the company or sidelining them. Companies also tried to remove traces of the
scandal by stamping out stories of the scandal and getting rid of records or
technologies which may serve as reminders of the scandal.
The researchers consider the forgetting of corporate
scandals to be a double edged sword. On the one hand, putting past mistakes
behind you helps a company keep a positive image of itself and move on. But
there is a very real danger that when companies forget a past scandal, they end
up repeating it again.
According to the researchers, Volkswagen has already taken a
sensible step with an apology. The speed with which a firm assumes full
responsibility for an event and asks for forgiveness from stakeholders is
likely to facilitate collective forgetting.
The researchers suggest that Volkswagen now needs to show
that it is actually doing substantive things about the scandal. It should not
just create short term fixes. People want to know that it is addressing root
causes.