Strategic ambiguity and the ethic of significant choice in the tabacco industry's crisis communication

Communication Studies, Fall 1997 by Ulmer, Robert R, Sellnow, Timothy L

1. Strategic ambiguity is ethical when it contributes to the complete understanding of an issue by

posing alternative views that are based on complete and unbiased data that aims to inform. 2. Strategic ambiguity is unethical if it poses alternative interpretations using biased and/or incomplete information that aims to deceive.

This is not to say that simply offering a competing interpretation constitutes ambiguity or a breach of ethics. Rather, in the case of organizational crisis communication, biased and/or incomplete information creates unethical ambiguity when organizations emphasize erroneous or minority claims while ignoring and/or misrepresenting predominant information that has been established by sources regarded as credible by the audience. Although organizational crisis situations impose a variety of limitations on communication, we contend that organizations can and should afford their stakeholders the opportunity to engage in significant choice.

Organizational Crisis and Significant Choice

Hermann (1972) explains that events which reach a crisis level occur as a surprise for corporations. Because organizational crises are typically unforeseen, organizations as well as regulatory agencies may not be able to fully ascertain the actions that caused the crisis until an extensive investigation is completed. In the meantime, the uncertainty surrounding the crisis situation is likely to make communication about causation and responsibility for the crisis ambiguous. Weick (1995) defines ambiguity as "an ongoing stream that supports several different interpretations at the same time" (pp. 91-92). The ambiguity in a crisis situation may, then, enable an organization to emphasize one interpretation of the crisis over another. Specifically, organizations can advocate a perspective or interpretation of crisis events which reflect more favorably on their industry than competing interpretations. Moreover, an organization may enhance the degree of ambiguity of a crisis in an effort to produce competing views of the situation. These strategies run the risk of violating the ethical standards for significant choice if the information shared by organizations is unnecessarily ambiguous or incomplete. Nilsen (1974) offers the following criteria for evaluating information:

Misinformation can be of various kinds. It is certainly not necessary for a speaker to make demonstrably false-to-fact statements in order to mislead his [sic] listeners. The information may, for instance, be incomplete; the selection of information may be biased; statistical units may be inadequately defined or incomplete; vague or ambiguous terminology, in which listeners find erroneous meanings may be used; relationships may be implied between the issue under discussion and other issues when, in fact, no relevant relationship exists (e.g., in guilt by association); the issue may be given a false sense of urgency or a false sense of importance; highly emotionalized language may be used, which may distort meanings. (pp. 71-72)