Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Legitimacy Maintenance: Lessons from the Parmalat Scandal

Audience decisions regarding whether to continue to support a corporation after it has been perceived as culpable for socially irresponsible behaviour is “coin of the realm” in selecting which firms (or which parts of a firm) will be able to survive a CSI-scandal. Our empirical setting is an embedded polar case of audience support, the Parmalat case, following a severe CSI scandal. Whilst the adaptive strategies taken to maintain the harmed moral legitimacy were a necessary procedural phase to consent the firms’ survival, they could not be considered sufficient to reintegrate the firm with its main constituent audiences. Essential to the maintaining process was the presence of rational effectiveness preserved from CSI event.