ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of how accounts based on neutralizations and justifications evolve over time as events from exposure of a corporate scandal move along. We are comparing corporations’ initial reactions to exposure of wrongdoing to what is later contained in internal investigations that they commission. We discuss the function of corporate neutralization techniques and argue that corporate accounts can mediate action over time. We study accounts that corporations apply after the fact, to excuse or justify offenses. It is a matter of crisis management, where a corporate crisis is an unexpected, publicly known, and harmful event that has high levels of initial uncertainty, interferes with the normal operations of an organization, and generates widespread, intuitive, and negative perceptions externally.
