| Several American university sports programs have been associated with scandals in recent years. A negative perception of an organization's reputation can be the result of a scandal. A negative school reputation could cause a decrease in enrollment, and it may threaten a school's academic viability. Some organizational leaders use crisis response strategies during and after a crisis to repair their organization's image. In this study, a quantitative, correlational, nonexperimental study was used to examine an audience's perception of a college or university's reputation based on school leaders use of different crisis response strategies. The crisis response strategies examined are comprised of two elements: a crisis response posture and a timing strategy. A total of 360 participants completed an online survey after reviewing videos of university leaders from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of Louisville delivering a crisis response strategy. While data analysis findings indicated that crisis response strategies used by school leaders affected the perception of the school, the results did not support the theory created for this study, which is that a crisis response strategy made up of a "rebuilding" posture and an ex-antecrisis timing strategy would result in a positive organizational reputation. The University of North Carolina (UNC) leaders used a crisis response strategy with a "diminishing" posture and an ex-postcrisis timing strategy, yet the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test analysis indicated that more respondents believed that UNC was concerned with the well-being of its fans which is, for the purpose of this study, equivalent to a positive organizational reputation. A recommendation is to measure crisis response postures and timing strategies separately to determine if study results would change. Another recommendation is to determine a university's pre-crisis reputation because a previous study reveals that a positive reputation prior to a crisis does not significantly change as a result of a scandal regardless of the crisis response strategy used by a leader. |
