About the event
The first of our Hilary term 2025 R:ETRO webinars – Reputation: Ethics, Trust, and Relationships at Oxford.
Antonino Vaccaro, Professor of Business Ethics at the IESE Business School, University of Navarra, will be the guest speaker for a seminar hosted by Alan Morrison, Professor of Law and Finance at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and Rita Mota, Assistant Professor, Department of Society, Politics and Sustainability at Esade Business School, and an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.
In this study, Antonino examined the endogenous process through which organisations develop their character following a crisis. He discussed the in-depth qualitative study of a leading European consumer health company that faced high-profile public accusations regarding the safety and efficacy of some of its products; and the development of a process model that details the specific processes and mechanisms through which organisational character is formed.
The model examines how a character attack triggers concurrent deliberative and emotional processes that collectively lead members to gradually find the resolve to ‘stand up’ to public accusations and develop a shared moral self-concept at the level of the organisation (ie organisational character). The findings provide valuable insights into the dynamics of organisational character formation, offering significant implications for ongoing research about this under-theorised concept that has recently been garnering increasing interest among scholars.
