The Role of Moral Salience in Firm-Stakeholder Repair

Corporate misconduct can often damage a firm-stakeholder relationship, and the repair of that relationship is a complex challenge. The type of repair needed will be a function of both the nature of the firm’s misconduct (what happened) and the nature of the firm-stakeholder relationship (with whom it happened). We introduce a new construct, moral salience, which is the extent to which the firm’s misconduct is noticeable and morally offensive to the stakeholder. Moral salience is a function of both the moral intensity of the misconduct and the relational intensity of the firm-stakeholder relationship. We draw upon this moral salience construct to develop a model of relationship repair that suggests the amount of goodwill needed to repair the relationship.