Crisis-Induced Service Decline Rationalization (CISDR): Reconfiguring Organizational Frontlines in Extreme Contexts

COVID-19 represents an example of extreme context that has tested the ethical boundaries of consumer-facing organisations. This crisis introduced profound implications for consumer trust, corporate legitimacy, and business ethics. This study challenges traditional theories that emphasise long-term trust-building, revealing how businesses prioritise short-term cost savings at the expense of ethical obligations during abrupt crises. Using a big data approach, we conducted thematic, sentiment and emotion analyses on 3,517 users' comments scraped from YouTube videos and Reddit discussion threads, considering the phenomenon. The findings were subsequently interpreted and contextualised using the Stakeholder Theory and Legitimacy Theory. Our results suggest a four-theme structure of the public's belief about crisis-induced service decline rationalisation, stipulating that 1) some of the COVID rules are illogical, 2) companies are taking advantage of the pandemic circumstances to reduce costs/effort, 3) the consumer service-related consequences of the pandemic reflect general incompetence and impaired quality, and 4) customer frustration with excessive service cuts. Moreover, the majority of the observed sentiments were negative, reflecting emotions of helplessness, fear, and frustration. These insights illustrate the erosion of public trust and corporate legitimacy in a time of crisis, presenting a pressing challenge for ethical business practices.