•The study applied the image repair discourse to the German business environment.•Mortification and reduce offensiveness appeared within the frame of corrective action.•Denial emerged within the frame of transcendence.•Contrary to past research on image repair, the company made little use of mortification.•The image repair strategies met the stakeholders’ expectations with regard to detail- orientation and crisis context. This analysis expands on the image restoration discourse and adapts it to the German business environment. It takes into account the cultural dimensions of uncertainty ambiguity and long-term orientation (Hofstede, 2011) to analyze Deutsche Telekom’s image repair attempts in the aftermath of a spying scandal. The results reveal that the strategies of mortification and reduce offensiveness emerged within the frame of corrective action while denial was present in the overarching theme of transcendence. The use of corrective action and transcendence as larger frames for crisis communication meets the stakeholders’ expectations in terms of a systematic overview of details and a focus on the crisis's context. The results reveal the need for continued research that ascertains ways of adapting the image repair discourse to international business environments. Finally, the results of this study can be used by companies that operate in Germany in their attempt to reduce the negative impact of a crisis on their reputation.