AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL DEFAMATION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE

Images are playing an increasingly important role in organizational life. This trend has spawned interest in how organizations can improve and protect their images. Yet, in our eagerness to study image promotion and repair, organizational scholars have overlooked the practice of image spoiling. Image spoiling occurs when an organization uses words and other symbols to attack the image of another organization. One of the most pervasive forms of image spoiling is interorganizational defamation. The purpose of this study is to explore some of the dynamics of interorganizational defamation. Data was collected from 68 interorganizational defamation cases that were adjudicated in the U.S. federal or state courts between 1964 and 1998. A model of interorganizational defamation was inductively derived from the defamation cases using grounded theory as a qualitative methodology. The model identifies some of the strategies of interorganizational defamation and their methods of implementation.