Ethics of research

Whenever a crisis hits a company they have to be ready to react. For instance very recently Toyota had a recall happen with questionable pedals. The recall went as far as overseas and in Canada. What did they do? They put their COO out on the web with an instructional video and apology. Toyota Apology

Now other companies don't handle their crisis very well. For instance this past summer BP oil put all the fishermen of the Gulf Coast out of jobs. Sure, apologies were given. Money is being disputed. But is this really what should have been out in the public? The biggest mistake of that clip was the fact the CEO made it about himself.

Now when learning or seeing about these companies and what made a successful it all came back to one solid fact. They had the research ready and they had to have some game plan in action. With this weeks blog I was curious to see the restrictions placed on the research companies like Toyota and BP can do.

When researching the ethics and research behind research I came across a thesis by Paul Stuart Lieber for the Louisiana State University. He said in his study that "Unlike journalism, there is no research pertaining to the public’s perceptions of public relations practitioner ethics and/or their ethical influences." I found this incredibly interesting but ethics in general in PR is wishy-washy that how could there actually be ethics for research.

So with this in mind I took to the textbook to figure out the facts. What I found really interesting about ethics is that for research there has to be voluntary participation, making sure there is no bribing for a study. When it comes to interpreting the data - no tampering and being open with the test results are major ethical rules.

After learning this all of this information I thought about how each crisis management team must have done to come up with the crisis plan. Its common sense that every company is going to run into problems nothing can ever run smoothly. There was a point in the book where it says "...if an advertising campaign generated a modest increase in awareness, it is not a researcher's job to suggest the if the client spent more media dollars on advertising the awareness would increase dramatically." (Jugenheimer 309). After reading this it made me wonder - did BP not realize in the mist of a crisis they need the media on their side? How did Toyota know that the media would be their best friend with a recall so big?