Abstract

This study examined the effect of CEO gender and intervention type on post-violation trust restoration in the event of an insider data breach. The results show that the insider breach event causes users’ trust to decline significantly. We also found that regardless of gender, CEO apology was more effective than denial in restoring post-violation trust. While there was no significant difference between the genders in the case of an apology, we found that in the case of denial male CEOs experienced significantly higher post-violation trust than female CEOs. The findings were explained using interactional justice. The study is among the first to examine the perceived differences between male and female CEOs and the social account of apology and denial. The study also examines the comparative effect of male and female CEO responses on male and female respondents respectively. Social, managerial and theoretical implications, along with future research directions, are discussed.

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