Conclusions: Corporate Apologia, Ideology, and Ethical Responses to Criticism

Like this example from the book of Joshua, the text of the Hebrew Scriptures abounds with examples of the Children of Israel being required to remember, to write down the details of a critical event, or to make a memorial. Such an obligation is suggestive of a critical function of corporate apologia, which is the act of putting the details of the wrongdoing, and the subsequent organizational response, on the public record-making an organization’s guilt and mortification a form of memorial for all to see (Phillips, 2004; Seeger et al., 2003).