Why Saying “I'm Sorry” Isn't Good Enough: The Ethics of Corporate ...

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Ethics Corporate Apologies Keywords: CEO, apologies, ethos, pathos, logos, role contamination 2
Ethics Corporate Apologies Why Saying “I’m Sorry” Isn’t Good Enough: The Ethics of Corporate Apologies “Apology is remarkably complex yet simple and straightforward at the same time.” (Lazare, 2005, 23) The number of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade (Lindner, 2007; Adams, 2000). The trend has caught the eye of both rhetoricians and management scholars who have analyzed various corporate apologies, characterizing some as sincere and others as merely ritualistic. The classification schemes used by these analysts tend to be highly schematic—i.e., they focus on the necessary and sufficient logical elements that an apology must possess in order to qualify as effective (Bisel et al, 2012). Another body of management literature overlaps with these logical analyses but focuses on which types of apologies by chief executive officers (CEOs) are most successful in repairing a firm’s image (Souder, 2010; Benoit, 1995; Benoit et al, 1997). The logical and public relations analyses are not completely distinct, for an apology by its very nature aims at restoring trust among parties and that restoration may involve damage control. However, as we will see, ethical corporate apologies go beyond mere image restoration. This article adds several important but overlooked dimensions to the debate by delving into the ethics of corporate apologies. First, rather than just listing traits or features than an apology should have, I ground these desirable features in the nature or essence of a Copyright © Society for Business Ethics. This paper is forthcoming in Business Ethics Quarterly. The non‐copyedited version is provided here as a service for personal scholarly use only. Any other use is subject to the same rights and permissions terms as articles published in BEQ. 3
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