دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی معنابخشی سازمانی رفتار مصرف کننده غیر اخلاقی: مطالعه شرکت بیمه فرانسه - اشپرینگر 2018

Abstract

Researchers and managers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the topic of unethical consumer behavior. Where most studies view unethical behavior as something that is identifiable per se, the authors of the present article believe that it only exists because it has been constructed by people operating within a specific context. Hence the efforts made by this paper to explore, at the level of one specific organization, how interactions between employees and consumers might lead to the construct of unethical consumers. Based on a case study of France’s AMDM—a mutual insurance company set up to serve a client base comprising motorcyclists—the paper addresses how one group of consumers ends up being categorized as unethical by revealing the existence of a sensemaking process within the target organization. This process develops in three main phases: the nurturing of a shared ethos; the protection of employees’ recognized status; and the demonization of any group of consumers threatening this status. Managers incorporating this sensemaking process can avoid or mitigate the negative effects befalling organizations when these kinds of unethical consumer behavior are constructed.

Conclusions and Limitations

The present text centers on a case study showing how a three-phase organizational sensemaking process culminated in the construction of unethical consumers. The process was repeatedly scrutinized in a context defined by the specific history of the organization in question. The end result has show how very context-dependent constructing unethical consumer behavior can be. It is a process that materializes in organizations whenever the elements ensuring employee recognition are undermined by the emergence of a new fringe of consumers who differ greatly from the original customer base.

Given that the study is limited to a specific cultural context, it would be interesting to complement it with investigations in similar organizations operating in different cultural contexts. Notable possibilities here include GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company), which after initially targeting US federal employees and certain categories of enlisted military officers, has grown to provide insurance to a wide range of customers. GEICO seems to have expanded its customer base without undergoing any major crises. One possible explanation might be the difference between its initial target (a professionally oriented community comprising workers) and the one that AMDM was set up to serve (a leisure-oriented community comprising enthusiasts).