Corporate scandals disrupt the landscape for organizational leaders and employees, providing a burning platform that creates new momentum for change. Here, we explore the implications for the human resources (HR) function as organization-level responses to scandals cannot occur without individual-level changes in employee behaviors—the domain of HR. We apply event systems theorizing to uncover the nature of the scandals through notions of strength, space, and time to better understand the range of possible outcomes for HR function roles. Empirical data are presented from in-depth qualitative case studies carried out in five large multinational corporations in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and financial services industries. Subsequently, we uncover how organization-level scandals punctuate the equilibrium of organizational operations, facilitating a recalibration of the balance between the potentially competing institutional logics of moral legitimacy and business priorities. We furthermore challenge universal HR role typology theorizing regarding the direct influence of external stakeholders on the role that HR can adopt inside organizations. Overall, we demonstrate that organizational responses to corporate scandals require individual-level and collective employee behavior change, placing the HR function at the intersection of managing risk, compliance, and legal requirements.

中文翻译：

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公司丑闻作为改变人力资源角色的事件

公司丑闻扰乱了组织领导者和员工的格局，提供了一个燃烧的平台，为变革创造了新的动力。在这里，我们探讨了对人力资源（HR）职能的影响，因为如果没有个人层面的员工行为（人力资源领域）的改变，组织层面对丑闻的反应就不可能发生。我们应用事件系统理论，通过强度、空间和时间的概念揭示丑闻的本质，以更好地了解人力资源职能角色可能出现的结果范围。经验数据来自对制药、化学和金融服务行业五家大型跨国公司进行的深入定性案例研究。随后，我们揭示了组织层面的丑闻如何破坏组织运作的平衡，从而促进道德合法性和商业优先事项的潜在竞争制度逻辑之间平衡的重新调整。我们进一步挑战关于外部利益相关者对人力资源在组织内部可以采取的角色的直接影响的通用人力资源角色类型学理论。总体而言，我们证明，组织对公司丑闻的反应需要个人层面和集体员工行为的改变，将人力资源职能置于管理风险、合规性和法律要求的交叉点。