Backpack sits down with Associate Professor O'Connor to talk about what trust means in a corporate world and how she tests her students in the harried art of crisis communication.
In a time where corporations are increasingly expected by consumers to stand for the values important to them, just saying the right thing is no longer enough. For Associate Professor Amy O’Connor, the real question is whether organizations walk the talk in good times and bad.
O’Connor studies corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication: how companies communicate their values and what occurs when those values are tested. Her work examines how stakeholders experience corporations in their everyday lives, from locked-out union workers to communities affected by large industries. In her current multi-year ethnographic project, O’Connor is researching mining companies in northern Minnesota, exploring and exposing the tensions and contradictions in the extraction industry, and the micro-processes of corporate-community relationship building.
We sat down with O’Connor to talk about expectations, the connection of trust between organization and consumer and the gap between what companies say and what they do.
Backpack: How did you end up at Hubbard?
Amy O’Connor: I was at North Dakota State University up in Fargo for 12 years before I came to the U in 2015. So it was the opportunity to be at a Big Ten school, join a faculty that is doing really exciting work and work with wonderful students
B: From your research, what separates companies that actually build trust from those who just look good on paper?
AO: We found that authenticity matters. Do your stakeholders kind of see what you’re doing? Can they understand why you’re doing it? Does it make sense to them because of everything that’s come before? Are you consistently doing a certain behavior over time? So people can see what you’re committed to as opposed to jumping on the bandwagon kind of thing.
Just like relationships we have with our friends, people have relationships with companies, and the same sort of premises hold true. You know, do we think that you really believe the things you’re saying? Are you doing words and deeds as opposed to just words? Because that always makes people suspicious. Then over time, do you keep showing up?
B: Why do you think students, regardless of their major, should care about corporate social responsibility when thinking about future employers?
AO: I’m going to level the question up a little bit and say, it’s not just about employers; it’s about your life and society, for good or bad. Corporations have replaced the church and state as the dominant institution of our time. Because of that, we all have a stake in what they do or don’t do. It’s important to understand corporations as social actors since that’s what they’re doing. When we think about them as just sort of the producer of some sort of good or service that we bought, we’re missing this broader understanding of just how prevalent corporations are in our everyday lives, whether we’re consumers or not.
For example, Amazon’s policies impact all of us even if we don’t buy from them. That’s why it’s important for people to be aware of how corporations are accepting or rejecting the responsibility of society and if they’re accepting CSR: what responsibilities are they accepting? Are they accepting the responsibility for paying their employees a livable wage? Are they accepting responsibility for engaging the community? That piece is important for all of us to understand.
B: Do you think there’s been a shift in recent generations when it comes to what people expect of companies in terms of transparency and social responsibility? What do you think the future looks like for corporate communication?
AO: I think the data shows that Gen Z has expectations around what they want from corporations, and they want corporations involved in social life. It’s not generational so much, though. Across generations, people want corporations to behave as responsible neighbors. They want corporations to voice an opinion, but it’s not as simple as corporations sharing their opinion. It’s revoicing the opinion that agrees with your opinion, and that puts corporations in a really tough spot. I tell my students sometimes a toothpaste purchase is just a toothpaste purchase. We’re not trying to make a statement with that. Sometimes we might be; sometimes we really are just buying toothpaste. There’s tension there because, yes, generally people want corporations to support causes that are important to them.
From a corporate communication standpoint, people are looking to corporations because we accepted the idea that they are our neighbors. At the same time, corporations have to think about what values are central to who they are. It’s easy to claim values when things are going well — it doesn’t really cost anything. The real question is whether those values hold when things get difficult. That’s what people respond to. If a corporation has spent years saying it stands for something, customers and communities begin to invest in that identity. But when challenges arise and the company pulls back, that’s when trust breaks down.
So internally, corporations have to ask: Are these truly our values, and will we stand by them under pressure? If the answer is uncertain, that’s where problems start.
B: In the case that you teach Crisis Communication this fall, what can students look forward to in that course?
AO: My favorite part of the course is the simulation at the end of the semester. During the semester, we learn all about the best practices of crisis comms, and then the last two weeks of the semester we do simulation. Students are put into teams and the class gets to pick who the company is in the crisis, but I get to pick the crisis and how it unfolds. Then they respond in real time, just like they’re working for the company.
Last fall, they picked Six Flags. It worked out well because Travis Kelce had just taken an ownership stake in the park. The crisis was that he was hosting his bachelor party at Six Flags and a bombing occurred. We did Delta Airlines one year, and the CEO got kidnapped. We’ve done Disneyland, Ticketmaster, and this semester is the Sphere, but I can’t tell you what’s going to happen! In the simulation, students know going in there will be no deaths, but they get to develop their communication responses in real time. We have a press conference where working reporters come and ask them questions. It’s great.
B: What is your Hubbard Hot take?
AO: I think Goldie should be able to talk.
To learn more about Amy O’Connor and her work, visit her CLA faculty profile.
Text by Ashaar Ali, photo by Jessica Chung, Office Hours logo by Reagan Frystak, Backpack students.