In HOs we trust : how crises affect brand image and trustworthiness in humanitarian organizations

Sammanfattning: During the past five years the Red Cross has been involved in two different internal crises. All of them can be related to trustworthiness and brand image. Why would someone keep donating money to an organization that has been involved in fraud and suspicion of corruption? The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how non-governmental (NGO) and non-profit (NPO) organizations rebuild their brand image and trustworthiness after a crisis. We will look at the problem from both the organization’s and the public’s point of view. The dissertation is based on theories about brand image, trustworthiness and crisis management. For the theoretical framework a model was created from these different theories. This study is conducted as a qualitative case study with a realistic philosophy. The findings and analysis shows that the Red Cross has an elaborated crisis management with a good base that can be adapted to suit each situation. However, there are some miscommunications between the organization and the public. Therefore, we suggest three improvements that can be made: communicate directly to the public, investigate immediately when suspicions occur, communicate the internal functions to the public. The first conclusion is that their form of reactive crisis management is that they have a weak pre-emptive crisis management, which consists of diffuse guidelines. After the crisis, these guidelines are adapted to the crisis. The second conclusion is that the organizations brand image and trustworthiness was affected negatively directly after the crisis occurred. However, today both the brand image and the trustworthiness have become stronger than before the crisis. Recommendation for future research is that it can be conducted in another area and include the behavior aspects of the respondents. In addition, the crisis communication team could be investigated.