Apologising for organisational misconduct: the journey towards stakeholder reconciliation

Organisational misconduct harms and offends stakeholders, damaging relationships with them. There are normative and instrumental arguments for why it is important for organisations to reconcile these relationships, a pursuit which begins with apology. But while organisational apologies have proliferated, many have failed to generate full, or even partial, reconciliation with stakeholders. Despite the significant attention that these phenomena have received from management scholars, the challenges and complexities associated with organisational apologies, and achievement of stakeholder reconciliation, remain under-theorised in the management domain. I therefore explore these phenomena, doing so in the context of multinational organisations implicated in state capture-related corruption in South Africa during the period 2012-16. My questions seek to describe different organisational apology journeys in response to misconduct, explain why these journeys might produce different levels of stakeholder reconciliation, and prescribe how organisations should apologise to stakeholders. To answer these questions, I develop conceptual frameworks which synthesise the management and other literatures, including politics, history, sociology, theology, philosophy and psychology. Using the Gioia methodology, I extend these frameworks through an investigation of leaders’ lived experiences of organisational apology journeys. My study establishes a framework prescribing what an ideal organisational apology should include, and why, how, when, and by whom it should be issued. My findings show that the prospects for stakeholder reconciliation depend on whether organisations embrace, finesse or reject this framework, as well as on several exogenous conditions: the economic role and services of organisations; the impact of time; differences in stakeholder attitudes; the possible impossibility of forgiveness; and stakeholder weaponisation of apologies. In some cases, an ideal apology may be a necessary but insufficient condition for stakeholder reconciliation; in others, it may be an unnecessary condition, with a partial apology sufficing. This study contributes theoretical insights about the complex interrelationships between these phenomena. These insights are relevant to organisational apologies for diverse types of misconduct, and can be turned into a road map or testable concepts for future research. The study’s recommendations about how to navigate challenges and more effectively implement the prescriptive framework can benefit apologising organisations, their harmed and offended stakeholders, and broader society.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Pretoria

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Walsh, James P

• UCTD
• Organisational misconduct

Statement dc:rights

• © 2025 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

A2025

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/110238