Application Paper #4

Situational Theory: Furloughed Workers as a New Public Erika M. Saca CSUF Comm. 518 Dr. Doug Swanson October 2nd , 2013

The government shutdown has left approximately 800,000 federal workers jobless for the time being. According to USA Today1, many businesses are turning this negative event into a more positive one. Those employees that have been furloughed have emerged as a new public that local businesses are targeting with special offers and freebies; everything from free coffee to free oil changes and other special discounts. These business -- both inside and outside the Beltway -- are trying to lure customers and media attention by offering everything from free cups of coffee to freebie sandwiches and free oil changesAll the bad political karma resulting from the shutdown that's temporarily left roughly 800,000 federal workers jobless is getting re-shaped into positive PR by dozens of companies desperately trying to make public relations lemonade out of the government shutdown lemon (Horovitz, B., 2013). Hyundai Motor has joined the cause by offering Federal employees a break from their payments while the shutdown keeps them out of work. This is the second time that the company stretches out a helping hand, the first being Hyundai Assurance. USA Today quoted the CEO of the company, "We recognize the impact on family budgets that the furlough will drive," says John Krafcik, CEO of Hyundai Motor America, in a statement. "Like we did almost four years ago when we launched Hyundai Assurance, this is our way of saying 'We've got your back' during this uncertain time (Woodyard, C. , 2013)."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/02/governmentshutdown-freebies-furloughed-workers/2907221/
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3 Situational theory of publics can be used to understand why a company would go to such lengths. As Kruger and associates wrote, it can help explain how publics form in the face of risk and crisis communication.

The situational theory has been used in numerous studies to assess the communication behavior of a variety of publics in an even greater number of situations, such as the general public's response to natural disasters (Major, 1998), Fortune 500 investors' reaction to corporate messaging (Cameron, 1992), consumers' behavior in different cultural settings (Sriramesh, Moghan, & Wei, 2007), women's understanding of health messages (Aldoory, 2001), and activist behavior by Sierra Club members (Grunig, 1989b) just to name a few (Kruger-Ross, M. , & Waters, R. 2013, p. 178)

Those that are affected directly by the government shutdown, furloughed Federal employees will have a high level of involvement with the situation. Their involvement with the situation is much higher than those that are not directly affected by the shutdown. All of those furloughed employees have a perceived shared experience Researchers have found that the greater the perceived similarity to characters portrayed in mediated campaigns, the more likely that identification and modeling will occur, which then lead to greater intent to change behavior (Aldoory, L. , Kim, J. , & Tindall, N., 2010, p. 135). Those brands and businesses that portray that shared experience with affected publics will garner some preference and positive identification.

4 "Hyundai has gone to great lengths over the years to identify itself as the car for the common man, and this furlough offer comes right out of that playbook. There isn't much risk, especially since it's unlikely that the government shutdown will last longer than a month." (Woodyard, C. , 2013) As Jessica Caldwell said to USA Today, Hyundai is playing this card to gain empathy from those affected. This is part of a larger strategy to be the common mans car of choice. It will be interesting to see how these strategies affect the perception of this new public of the brands offering this kind of help.

References

Aldoory, L. , Kim, J. , & Tindall, N. (2010). The influence of perceived shared risk in crisis communication: Elaborating the situational theory of publics. Public Relations Review, 36(2), 134-140.

Horovitz, B. (2013). Freebies to furloughed workers ease shutdown pain. USATODAY.com

Kriyantono, R. (2012). The situational theory of the publics in an ethnography research: Identifying public response to crisis management. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(20), .

Kruger-Ross, M. , & Waters, R. (2013). Predicting online learning success: Applying the situational theory of publics to the virtual classroom. Computers & Education, 61, 176-184.

Woodyard, C. (2013). Hyundai gives loan breaks to idled federal workers. USATODAY.com