Who to Blame? Coping With the Blame Culture

Over the past few days I have steadily been getting more and more annoyed with people around me as they have been getting increasing more content on blaming others for their own downfalls in life. My firm belief is that you should always take responsibility for your own actions, but the problem is, how does this apply to your business?

Getting Blamed

As there is such a blame culture around the world nowadays, you are very likely to have a problem in your business’s lifetime with someone blaming you for something. It’s inevitable. As well as this, you will have to deal with it in one of two ways, either; Take responsibility and accept the blame, or fight the blame. Both of these can have good and bad consequences for your business. In this article, I would like to go over come of these consequences so that I can present why blame is such an annoying element in today’s business world.

In the following situations I will be looking at taking and not taking the blame for an incident which wasn’t your fault as such, but which still happened.

Taking the Blame

When you get that first complaint, you might no what to do and head straight for taking the blame. Which could prove to be the right decisions, or it could prove to be the wrong one.

Good Coming from Taking the Blame

Taking the blame for an incident which wasn’t your fault may be the right decision due to the fact that if you didn’t there may be a fall in your brand image. This is why most businesses have to own up to incidents and chose to take the blame for them. It allows you to see the situations out in the easiest way and try and maintain your brand image, as you are trying to do what is right for the customer and in turn keeping them happy. As well as this taking the blame may save money in the long-term. If the situation which occurred is quite a big one, then taking the blame may save money because you won’t have to try and get over the situation by improving marketing, adding more marketing etc. This was shown when there were problems with Toyotas recently, which caused them to market a lot to show that they are keen to solve the problems and in turn create better cars, which would hopefully not only get over the problems they had, but improve from it.

Bad Coming from Taking the Blame

From taking the blame, you may seem like a pushover and in turn this can lead to more people blaming you. Consequently, if you paid up to the original person, you will be expected to pay up for the second person. This will cost a lot of money as people will keep coming back for more. Another problem is that if you go back on what you said, your brand image is suffer and this could lead to the marketing expresses, which I have mentioned in the above section.

Conclusion

You need to make a decision whether to take the blame on how big the problem is and whether people can easily replicate the problem to try and get money off you.

Not Taking the Blame

Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, not take the blame and not seem like a pushover. This may affect your brand image negatively in some ways, but it could also make your business look a lot stranger which in turn could increase brand image.

Good Coming form not taking the Blame

You stand up and make it known that you don’t take the easy option out of a situation, which can make your business seem a lot stranger and therefore gain a strong brand reputation. As well as this, you will save money form rectifying the problem and this can then be put into other areas of the business.

Bad Coming from not taking the Blame

If the situation is serious, you may be shown making the morally wrong decision which in turn can look very bad for the company. As well as this, more action may be taken against you, which can lead to even more money having to be spent, than if you just gave in, in the first place. More money may also have to be spent to market the problem away, so by improving your brand image and trying to hide the problem by doing more, or better, marketing and promotion.

Conclusion

Again, you need to look into how bad the problem is and whether you can just hide it with marketing, or whether it will come back and bite you… costing you even more money.

Taking Action against the Blame Culture

In the olden days we wouldn’t have had problems like this. People took responsibility for their own actions. There wasn’t blame on a company for tripping over something in their shop. In most occasions this type of blame is going too far and making running a business even more difficult. You don’t have to just concentrate on finances; you will have to take charge of the situations which arise from blame.

Have you suffered any problems like this? If so, how did you deal with it? If you haven’t suffered a problem like this, what would you do if it came up?

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net