Socially responsible joint venture, brand misconduct and recovery communication: Implications for relationship quality

There is little doubt that in the past several decades, an increasing number of organisations are seeking out strategic alliances, joint ventures, and an increasing number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in order to gain competitive advantage and enable the organisations to achieve objectives that would not have been possible without the alliance (Das & Teng, 2000; Lacey, Kennett-Hensel, & Manolis, 2014; Nowell & Harrison, 2011; Tjemkes & Furrer, 2010). Increasingly corporations and non-profit organisations or charities are using those relationships and joint projects as critical institutional positioning for achieving mutual goals (Shumate & O'Connor, 2010). These organisations are building ‘ethical brand identifications’ based on the collaborative work they are doing. In fact, as a result of the 2008 economic crash, many companies have increasingly pursued and developed structured ethics programs because those companies engaging in socially responsible activities can gain strength, power, and importance in the global marketplace (Kreng & May-Yao, 2011 945; Uccello, 2009). These CSR initiatives meant to demonstrate a system that values a culture of ethics and support, fulfilling missions, and acting as models for society (Kreng & May-Yao, 2011). Yet despite growing amounts of research analysing relationship quality, corporate social responsibility, crisis communication, and brand misconduct, little research has analysed differences among types of misconduct – for example a transgression where the organisation has broken the law or a transgression where the behaviours are ethically questionable – the relative impact of brand misconduct on corporate and charitable partners in joint venture, nor the effects that response strategies may play in managing the relationships between consumers and these ‘irresponsible’ organisations. In the following section, we describe the literature on CSR joint initiatives and brand misconduct before introducing the relationship marketing dialogue. We then highlight areas of conceptual overlap between relationship marketing, brand misconduct, and crisis response.