Managing organizational legitimacy in the California cattle industry: A model of verbal account construction and effectiveness.

摘要

This dissertation used three studies to develop and partially test a model describing the construction and effectiveness of organization-level verbal accounts. Study 1 used qualitative analysis to explore the construction of verbal accounts used by spokespersons from the California cattle industry following controversial events. This study revealed that: (1) the forms of verbal accounts used by spokespersons matched forms defined by impression management theories, and (2) the contents of verbal accounts used by spokespersons included references to organizational characteristics suggested by institutional theorists. Several common links between specific account forms and contents are described. These links appear to be designed to make explanations more logical, consistent, and harder to refute. Next, study 2 explored the effectiveness of different combinations of account forms and contents through a qualitative study of California cattle industry audiences. This analysis suggests that links between specific account forms and references to specific organizational characteristics can be effective in enhancing organizational legitimacy following controversy, but that effectiveness varies with the type of linkage and organizational audience. I propose eight hypotheses about the effectiveness of different account forms, contents, and links between forms and contents. Links between (a) account forms that acknowledge the controversy and (b) account contents that refer to institutionalized structures or procedures appear to be most effective in enhancing images of organizational legitimacy. Audiences found these accounts to be more believable, credible, and adequate than other accounts. Finally, study 3 used an experimental vignette involving cattle industry consumers to test three of the most interesting and parsimonious hypotheses from study 2. This study supported propositions that: (1) acknowledging account forms are more effective in protecting legitimacy than defensive forms, (2) references to institutional characteristics are more effective in protecting legitimacy than references to technical characteristics, and (3) accounts that link acknowledging forms with references to institutional characteristics are more effective in protecting legitimacy than accounts that only contain one of these components. Together, findings from these three studies provide a first step toward understanding the construction and effectiveness of verbal accounts used to protect organizational legitimacy.