Navigating the ‘double bind’ of corporate communication during challenging times – Scholar Q&A with John Balabanis

Knowing that hostility toward a company’s decisions can escalate into hate and, at times, violence, Page Center scholars John Balabanis and Georgiana Grigore, University of Leicester, are exploring how organizations can communicate amid today’s tense political climate. Specifically, they want to know when businesses should (or shouldn’t) speak up on controversial issues. Based on interviews with corporate executives, they hope to build a framework that will help leaders make ethical, effective decisions about when to make a public statement. In this Q&A, Balabanis discusses political hostility, green hushing and what a decision-making matrix for businesses might look like. This project is part of the Page Center’s 2026 Call on Social Responsibility, Advocacy, and Activism in an Age of Political and Cultural Polarization.

Talk about your collaboration with Georgiana and how it came together for this project.

I've always been very interested in political science, and Georgiana has very similar research interests. So, we were talking about various issues. For example, we talked about the whole story with Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney and issues like that. The next time we chatted, she suggested to me, "Hey, John, the Arthur W. Page Center is accepting grant proposals. Why don't we apply?” We drafted the idea and here we are now.

What’s the project and how does it fit in with where we are in today’s political climate?

Our research is focused on how a firm can navigate political hostility. When can it communicate something? When should it not communicate something? Will there be a backlash if it goes and communicates that thing? So, the project is very much like a roadmap or a matrix. It’ll allow firms to think: “OK, if we go and say this, how will it play out?” Last year’s EcoVadis survey found that a majority of firms say they engage in green hushing. That means in practice they're super pro-environment. But they don’t communicate anything about it because they recognize that it's a divisive issue that can potentially alienate their customer base.

So, the question I'm interested in answering is: At what point is it a kind of deception where a company will pretend that they're doing something virtuous and good, but they're not? And at what point is it some kind of act of buffering, where they're trying to protect themselves from an environment that's becoming hostile and threatening to them?

Are there other examples of companies staying silent?

Companies are stuck in what’s called a double bind. If they start talking about things, there's a chance that they will be outed. For example, they say something, but in reality their lobbying activities go and suggest they want to do the exact opposite. On the opposite side, when they stay silent, a company’s opponents think they’re complicit. So, complicity becomes a big part of the matrix. It’s figuring out: What are the circumstances? What’s the context? Are we complicit? Or is it something that can be ignored?

What’s the plan for the study? How does one build a road map or matrix?

The plan is that we're going to collect data from 25 executives from 12 firms, people who are involved in the communications or political affairs of the company. We're going to follow a data collection process after the summer. The data collection will involve interviews and the interviews will have two phases. We will give them political hostility scenarios and measure how the firms navigate them. What kind of stuff do they do? And then we’re going to do something called stimulated recall. We’ll ask: What does the company say? What did it do in reality? Is it following through? Is it not? We’ll compile that and organize it into different matrices.

Can you talk about the practical takeaways of this project?

People at businesses might look at the matrix and apply it when drafting plans. They're thinking about how to implement a strategy or when to talk about something. So, it’s a model or a map that they can use that will inform their practices. A lot of businesses already have a map like this in place. Our project is more codifying it and making it something proper that exists in the public domain. It’ll be something that people can access. My hope is that it'll be something useful that teams can go and use when implementing their plans.

What does Page Center support mean to a project like this? How does it help you achieve your research goals?

This call by the Page Center directly aligns with my research interests. This is the kind of research I like. So, the Center gives me two things. It gives me access to an organization that has a very high reputation, which obviously makes me much more attractive to journals. They will be much more inclined to look at my work and say, “OK, this has some backing to it.” The support enables me to more efficiently perform data collection while also performing my other duties like teaching and the other research projects I'm trying to do.