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Sanjaya C. Kuruppu, Markus J. Milne and Carol A. Tilt
The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy is gained, maintained or repaired through direct action with salient stakeholders and/or through external reporting, by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy is gained, maintained or repaired through direct action with salient stakeholders and/or through external reporting, by using a number of empirical case vignettes within a single case study organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study investigates a foreign affiliate of a large multinational organisation involved in an environmentally sensitive industry. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with 26 participants, organisational reports and participation in the organisation’s annual environmental management seminar and a stakeholder engagement meeting.
Findings
Four vignettes featuring environmental issues illustrate the complexity of organisational responses. Issue visibility, stakeholder salience and stakeholder interconnectedness influence a company’s action to manage legitimacy. In the short-term, environmental issues which affected salient stakeholders resulted in swift and direct action to protect pragmatic legitimacy, but external reporting did not feature in legitimacy management efforts. Highly visible issues to the public, regulators and the media, however, resulted in direct action together with external reporting to manage wider stakeholder perceptions. External reporting was used superficially, along with a broad suite of communication strategies, to gain legitimacy in the long-term decision about the company’s future in New Zealand.
Research limitations/implications
This paper outlines how episodic encounters to manage strategic legitimacy with salient stakeholders in the short-term are theoretically distinct, but nonetheless linked to continual efforts to maintain institutional legitimacy. Case vignettes highlight how pragmatic legitimacy via dispositional legitimacy can be managed with direct action in the short-term to influence a limited range of salient stakeholders. The way external reporting features in legitimacy management is limited, although this has predominantly been the focus of prior research. Only where an environmental incident damages legitimacy to a larger number of stakeholders is external reporting also used to buttress community support.
Originality/value
The concept of legitimacy is comprehensively applied, linking the strategic and institutional arms of legitimacy and illustrating how episodic actions are taken to manage legitimacy in the short-term with continual efforts to manage legitimacy in the long-term. Stakeholder salience and networks are brought in as novel theoretical extensions to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between these key concepts with a unique case study.
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Sanjaya C. Kuruppu, Markus J. Milne and Carol A. Tilt
This study aims to respond to calls for more research to understand how sustainability control systems (SCSs) feature (or do not feature) in short-term operational and long-term…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to respond to calls for more research to understand how sustainability control systems (SCSs) feature (or do not feature) in short-term operational and long-term strategic decision-making.
Design/methodology/approach
An in-depth case study of a large multinational organisation undertaking several rounds of sustainability reporting is presented. Data collection was extensive including 26 semi-structured interviews with a range of employees from senior management to facility employees, access to confidential reports and internal documents and attendance of company meetings, including an external stakeholder engagement meeting and the attendance of the company’s annual environmental meeting. A descriptive, analytical and explanatory analysis is performed on the case context (Pfister et al., 2022).
Findings
Simon’s (1995) levers of control framework structures our discussion. The case company has sophisticated and formalised diagnostic controls and strong belief and boundary systems. Conventional management controls and SCSs are used in short-term operational decision-making, although differences between financial imperatives and other aspects such as environmental concerns are difficult to reconcile. SCSs also provided information to justify company actions in short-term decisions that impacted stakeholders. However, SCSs played a very limited role in the long-term strategic decision. Tensions between social, environmental and economic factors are more reconcilable in the long-term strategic decision, where holistic risks and opportunities need to be fully identified. External reporting is seen in a “constraining” light (Tessier and Otley, 2012), and intentionally de-coupled from SCSs.
Originality/value
This paper responds to recent calls for rich, holistic and contextually-grounded perspectives of sustainability processes at an extractives company. The study provides novel insight into how SCSs are used (or not used) in short-term or long-term decision-making and external reporting. The paper illustrates how a large company is responding to sustainability pressures within the unique contextual setting of New Zealand. The study outlines the imitations of existing practice and provides implications for how sustainability-based internal controls can be better embedded into organisations.
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Glenn Boyle and Xu Ji
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the stylised facts about NZ corporate boards and identify unanswered questions about their composition, activity and incentives during the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the stylised facts about NZ corporate boards and identify unanswered questions about their composition, activity and incentives during the 16-year period between 1995 and 2010.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses annual report data to document the evolution of 22 NZ board characteristics. The paper also informally compares these trends with those occurring in other countries.
Findings
Unsurprisingly, the representation of non-executive, independent and female directors on NZ boards rose during the period, as did real chair and director fees and the importance of board committees, while average board size fell. Perhaps more surprisingly, much of this movement occurred before NZX governance reforms in 2003. Moreover, there are some intriguing differences between New Zealand and other, mainly larger, countries.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis is largely descriptive and focuses on identifying questions rather than answering them.
Originality/value
The paper fills an obvious gap in the governance literature, which largely ignores small, open economies, and hence provides little clue as to the overall state and evolution of NZ boards. The paper also identifies a number of questions for further research.
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This paper reports on the outcomes of a study in a service industry in which concept maps were used to facilitate the process of employees at all levels of an organisation…
Abstract
This paper reports on the outcomes of a study in a service industry in which concept maps were used to facilitate the process of employees at all levels of an organisation discussing and negotiating work issues. The use of the maps in the discussions facilitated inter‐employee co‐operation and communication. Specifically the use of the maps assisted employees to understand the perspective of others, organise their own thoughts, keep on track during meetings, reduce confrontation in meetings, share information, and involve all participants. The authors include, as an example, a description of one of the nine cases in the study in which two employees redesign a component of their work, and in the process improve their working relationship, thus addressing issues of significance to both employees. The authors conclude that concept mapping is an innovative tool which can be used by employees at all levels of an organisation for co‐operative work redesign.
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This paper aims to explore how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music. Particular attention is paid to how the accountant is constricted by artists in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music. Particular attention is paid to how the accountant is constricted by artists in art and the role(s) the accountant plays in the artistic narrative. In effect this explores the notion that there is a tension between the notion of the bourgeois world of “the accountant” and the world of “art for art's sake”.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on the cultural theory of Pierre Bourdieu to understand how the character of the accountant is constructed and used by the artist. Particular attention is paid in this respect to the biography and lyrics of the Beatles.
Findings
Accounting and accountants play both the hero and the villain. By rejecting the “accountant villain”, the artist identifies with and reinforces artistic purity and credibility. However, in order to achieve the economic benefits and maintain the balance between the “art” and the “money”, the economic prudence of the bourgeois accountant is required (although it might be resented).
Research limitations/implications
The analysis focuses on a relatively small range of musicians and is dominated by the biography of the Beatles. A further range of musicians and artists would extend this work. Further research could also be constructed to more fully consider the consumption, rather than just the production, of art and cultural products and performances.
Originality/value
This paper is a novel consideration of how accounting stereotypes are constructed and used in the field of artistic creation
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The people of this country are frequently described, more or less correctly, as “long suffering,” and there is possibly no question in regard to which they have suffered so much…
Abstract
The people of this country are frequently described, more or less correctly, as “long suffering,” and there is possibly no question in regard to which they have suffered so much and so long as that of the national food supply. Now and again some more thoughtful member of the Legislature addresses a question on the subject to some responsible Minister of the Crown, possibly on the sufficiency, or sometimes even on the purity of some article of food, and receives an answer which, as a general rule, is a mere feeble evasion of the particular point on which information is desired.
The purpose of this paper is to show the limits of a-hierarchical organization in the Wikimedia movement governance model. Wikimedia governance, as well as the dynamic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show the limits of a-hierarchical organization in the Wikimedia movement governance model. Wikimedia governance, as well as the dynamic transformations it is currently undergoing, remains to be covered by the literature on organization and management studies; yet, they exemplify the problems with the “organization of the future,” which is highly idealized throughout the management literature.
Design/methodology/approach
The research design relies on an ethnographic, long-term, participative study of the Wikipedia community at large. The methods used rely mainly on discourse analysis and interviews. The study benefits from the unique participant immersion of the researcher (who spent six years participating in the studied community, making over five edits each day on average, and being elected to several positions of highest trust within the organization).
Findings
The findings show that the open, participative, and democratic character of the organization, which in theory is oriented toward sustainable solidarity, as well as the semi-anonymous character of some of the members’ identities, makes the community more empowered yet more belligerent. Also, the entirely open and flat governance model makes it more difficult to establish a stable leadership consensus.
Research limitations/implications
Research is limited due to its methodological design, as it relies on in-depth qualitative case studies, rather than wider analysis. Further quantitative research is needed to confirm the findings on a bigger scale and in other open collaboration organizations.
Practical implications
The findings show that participative organizational design, especially in open collaboration projects, have adverse effects in leading to overly confrontational and quarrelsome organizational culture, which not only makes decision making more difficult, but also deters people less used to debating and conflict.
Social implications
The social implications of the findings suggest that even in highly democratized structures, some minimal forms of leadership, and governance are useful to facilitate the decision-making processes.
Originality/value
This paper extends the understanding of organizational dynamics and governance in open collaboration organizations, and exposes the shortcomings of this model, which are an inevitable trade-off for its indisputable benefits.