Image restoration theory have been used to examine various organizational crisis including the recent case of Wells Fargo’s scandal involving 2 million fake bank accounts. Image restoration theory is developed by William Benoit and it guides people, groups and organization on what to say when they face crisis such as scandals, frauds and so on (University of Ohio, n.d.). While analysing the case, we have found out that Wells Fargo used in total of three image restoration strategies which are denial, mortification and corrective actions. The first strategy that Wells Fargo used for its image restoration plan is denial. Denial is normally applied when the individual or the organization deny that the issue at hand ever occurred or deny the fact that they are the ones responsible for the issue (Selzer, 2013). This can be seen when John Stumphf - former chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo was interviewed by Wall Street Journal, he was asked who was responsible for the negative culture which resulted to the 2 million fraud account in which he refused to answer and denied that the organization has encouraged such culture and proceeds to blame low paid employees of Wells Fargo for being the bad apples of the company (Bellware, 2016; Raymond, 2016). …show more content…
The use of mortification strategy can be seen when Mark Sloan, current CEO of Wells Fargo apologized to the customers and as well as employees of Wells Fargo on October 2016 who was affected by the 2 million fake bank account incident that had just happened (Shen, 2016). Although this apology came one month late, it shows that the organization is bearing responsibilities for the negative effects caused towards its internal audience – the employees of Wells Fargo and as well as external audience – customers of Wells