Exploring the constituents of Investor Relations in a crisis in Germany: antecedents, consequences and role.
In my thesis, I explore the constituents of an organizational crisis for Investor Relations and the capital market in Germany. The literature review reveals a research gap on crisis research for these organizational groups as well as on qualitative research in the field. Grounding my research within the hermeneutic phenomenological tradition, I conduct an instrumental case study on BP and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to obtain the required pre-understanding. I use secondary data by means of newspaper articles from three UK national newspapers. The findings from the instrumental case study guide the collection of primary data. I conduct interviews with Investor Relations managers and institutional capital market participants. I analyze the interview data using thematic analysis. A crisis that is considered relevant for Investor Relations and the capital market shows different characteristics than those relevant for other organizational crises. My study extends existing crisis frameworks by adding impacts and the perspective from a specific corporate function and the related stakeholder group. It offers a new conceptualization of crisis. Research regarding impacts on capital markets is often associated with quantitative research, using secondary data to assess effects on share prices. My research seeks to explore the underlying mechanisms of effects on Investor Relations and the capital market by employing a twofold exploratory approach. Therefore, my qualitative approach is methodologically relevant. I demonstrate that qualitative research can be applied successfully in this domain and obtain meaningful results.