ArticlePDF Available

Clothes Make the Person? The Tailoring of Legitimating Accounts and the Social Construction of Identity

Authors:
William Edward Douglas Creed at University of Rhode Island
William Edward Douglas Creed
Maureen A. Scully
Maureen A. Scully
Maureen A. Scully
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
John Austin at University of New England
John Austin
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

We empirically explore the legitimating accounts for and against policies precluding workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, focusing on how agents working at both the national level and within organizations use broader cultural accounts in building their legitimating accounts in local settings. The diffusion perspective in institutional theory has portrayed how agents import 'ready-to-wear' cultural accounts. In contrast, translation theory depicts how agents interpret and adapt cultural accounts as they fashion them into legitimating accounts for a local setting. An alternative would theorize accounts that are neither strictly borrowed nor idiosyncratically tailored. We advanced a third perspective, drawing on frame analysis as it is used in social movement theory. Framing theory attends to both the importance of cultural building blocks and the embedded ways in which agents relate to and shape systems of meaning and mobilize collective action to change social arrangements. We find that legitimating accounts are intertwined with the construction of social identities, which serve to legitimate, on the one hand, an account maker's participation in the discourse and set of claims, and on the other hand, the involvement of proponents and crucial audiences. We suggest that the mobilizing potential of legitimating accounts rests in part on their messages becoming 'autocommunicational,' so that listeners identify themselves with the message.
Content uploaded by John Austin
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by John Austin on Jan 17, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Clothes make the person? The tailoring of legitimating accounts and the soci...
W E Douglas Creed; Maureen A Scully; John R Austin
Organization Science; Sep/Oct 2002; 13, 5; ABI/INFORM Global
pg. 475
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
... Often, entrepreneurship is enabled by moments of uncertainty, instability and crisis (Fligstein 2001;Greenwood and Suddaby 2006), which -by throwing existing beliefs, routines and institutions into doubt -provide opportunities for creative acts of change. Entrepreneurs exploit such "windows of opportunity" (Kingdon 1995: 166-170) to indict prevailing ideas and arrangements (Skowronek 1997) and propose new ones that seem to better address the challenges at hand (Creed et al. 2002). By effectively identifying a problem and its importance, explaining who or what is responsible for it, and proposing the objectives, means and responsibility for addressing it, the entrepreneur sets the stage for action that alters the status quo (Benford and Snow 2000). ...
... First, by incorporating familiar ideas, organizational forms and political or legal institutions into their innovations, entrepreneurs make their ideas more socially acceptable, and thus more likely to be taken up by others (Campbell 1997;Carpenter and Sin 2007;Douglas 1986;Gamson 1992;Greenwood and Suddaby 2006;Leca et al. 2008). Second, entrepreneurs recruit allies to their cause by strategically tailoring their innovations to resonate with the interests and identities of potential supporters, thereby further encouraging take-up and dissemination (Chua 2015;Creed et al. 2002). And third, as Carpenter has argued at length (2001; 2010), entrepreneurs build confidence among potential allies by developing their innovations in an incremental fashion. ...
... As a political entrepreneur, Wolfson sought to exploit this crisis moment to articulate a refined agenda and strategy for the marriage equality movement (Creed et al. 2002;Fligstein 2001;Greenwood and Suddaby 2006;Skowronek 1997). Wolfson laid out what he called his "Blueprint for the Movement" in the September 2001 issue of The Advocate. ...
Legal entrepreneurship and the evolution of multidimensional advocacy in social movements: the case of marriage equality
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2024
The emergence and dissemination of new legal ideas can play an important role in sparking change in the way activists in marginalized communities understand their rights and pursue their objectives. How and why do the legal beliefs of such communities evolve? We argue that the vigorous advocacy of new legal ideas by entrepreneurs and the harnessing of specialized media to help disseminate those ideas are important mechanisms in this evolution. We use the rise of marriage equality as a central legal priority in the mainstream American LGBTQ+ rights movement as a case study to illustrate this phenomenon. Using a mixed-methods analysis of Evan Wolfson’s legal advocacy and an examination of The Advocate , we investigate how Wolfson developed and disseminated legal ideas about same-sex marriage. We show how this advocacy eventually dominated discussion of the issue among elite LGBTQ+ legal actors and the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ publication. However, Wolfson’s advocacy tended to emphasize LGBTQ+ integration into “mainstream” American culture and prioritized the interests and values of relatively privileged subgroups within the LGBTQ+ community. Our research informs our understanding of the interplay between legal advocacy and media reporting in the development of LGBTQ+ rights claims and the strategies adopted to achieve them.
View
... Individual sensemaking with reframing strategies, however, does not provide avenues for actual change; instead, individuals accept their identity and play down the undesirable features while focusing on the aspirational aspects of their work (Goretzki and Messner, 2019;Morales and Lambert, 2013). Identity research suggests that gaining legitimacy is the most important step to enhance an identity fit (Creed et al., 2002). To support this legitimization, diverse mechanisms at the organizational and group level might be relevant. ...
Inner struggle or identity fit – control configurations that improve management accountants’ sense of their identity
Article
  • Jun 2024
  • J Account Organ Change
Purpose This study aims to investigate which configurations of organizational-level and group-level management controls support an identity fit for management accountants in the management accounting profession. It aims to complement recent qualitative management accounting research. This stream just begun to use role and identity theory to investigate role expectations, conflicts and coping strategies of management accountants when they struggle with their work identity. Design/methodology/approach Based on configuration theory, this study uses a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to indicate all possible configurations of formal and informal management controls that improve management accountants’ sense of their identity in an organization. The analyses are based on the results of a cross-sectional survey of 277 management accountants from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Findings The results show that a strong group culture and high psychological safety at the group level are relevant conditions for a high identity fit. Further, the configurations differ regarding the career stages of management accountants. Originality/value This study contributes to work identity research of management accountants and to research on formal and informal control configurations as a control package. It is of particular importance for various professions that are affected by role change, as from the findings on management accountants’ identity fit, implications can also be made for other organizational functions that need to engage in identity work.
View
... Further, in BOPMs, social innovation is highly likely to challenge existing societal norms, culture, traditions, and prevailing beliefs-by challenging existing moral and cognitive frameworks-and to play an important role in dictating what social behaviours are acceptable in BOPMs. In such situations, SEs often resort to rhetoric and narratives to build institutional legitimacy (informal) and to gain acceptance for new ideas driven by social innovation (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994;Creed et al., 2002). Rhetoric and language can be effectively used by SEs to propagate ideas related to new social realities validate arguments, and thus build the credibility required to drive social innovation Watson, 1995). ...
Driving Social Innovation in Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Markets through International Social Alliances: The Role of Legitimacy
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
International social alliances—in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) and social enterprises (SEs) collaborate—are a vital source for the development and scaling up social innovations for value creation. Yet, these alliances face significant legitimacy challenges, which are more glaring in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets (BOPMs) within emerging and developing economies owing to weak and underdeveloped formal institutions. Drawing on the legitimacy, institutional, and social alliances literature, we develop a conceptual framework that explains the importance of developing social, institutional, and commercial legitimacy in international social alliances operating in BOPMs. We also explored the challenges faced by international social alliances in BOPMs and the factors that enable MNEs and SEs to build different types of legitimacy. We contribute to international business research by providing an understanding of various legitimacy building strategies enacted by international social alliances based in BOPMs for social value creation.
View
... However, successful co-production may not be easily achieved as it can profoundly change the socially accepted division of responsibilities (Rinne-Koski and L€ ahdesm€ aki, 2021). Thus, to better support new coproduction models and avoid pitfalls, those for whom the CBSE activities are intended, need to construct "legitimating accounts" (see Creed et al., 2002) that bring out the appropriateness of the new practice. If this does not take place, institutional changes in the service production to include CBSEs as acceptable service providers are not likely to achieve recognition and stability (Bitektine and Haack, 2015). ...
Legitimacy of community-based social enterprises (CBSE) in service provision in rural areas
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2024
Purpose Municipalities seek new opportunities for co-producing services in rural areas. One potential partner is community-based social enterprises (CBSEs). However, whilst service co-production through CBSEs obscures the traditional roles of actors, it may lead to a legitimation crisis in local service provision. In this paper, the ways CBSEs are legitimised as service providers in rural areas are addressed from the CBSE and municipality perspectives. Design/methodology/approach Empirical data combine interviews with CBSE representatives and open-ended national survey responses from municipality decision-makers. The data analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis to examine legitimation arguments. Findings Results show that unestablished legitimacy and un-institutionalised support structures for co-production models build mistrust between CBSEs and municipalities, which prevents the parties from seeing the benefits of cooperation in service production. Research limitations/implications The research focusses on the legitimation of CBSEs in service co-production in rural areas. As legitimation seems to be a context-specific process, future research is needed regarding other contexts. Practical implications Municipalities interested in the co-production of services might benefit from establishing a collaborative and responsive (rural) service policy forum that would institutionalise new models of co-production and enable better design and governance of service provision. Originality/value Results will give new theoretical and practical insights into the importance of legitimacy in the development of service co-production relationships.
View
... In her seminal wardrobe studies work, Woodward [21] reveals how women use the contents of their wardrobes to create and recreate their identities. The emotional connections that people have with clothes are central to this perspective, which recognises that clothes are much more than functional: they shape the wearer's identity [22][23][24], not always positively [25]. In our work, we used a version of Woodward's [21] wardrobe audit exercise. ...
A Social Practices Approach to Encourage Sustainable Clothing Choices
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2024
The literature on sustainable clothing covers five key thematic areas: problems associated with fast fashion; sustainable fibre production; sustainable design protocols; corporate responsibility; sociological and social–psychological understandings; and pro-environmental behaviour changes. This article interweaves these approaches in a study that assesses the potential of experiential learning in clothes making, mending, and modifying workshops to help generate new social practices. The workshop design drew on the five key thematic areas and purposively provided participants with infrastructures and equipment, facilitators, and peer-to-peer support and dialogue as means to help them collaboratively generate new skills, new senses of meaning, and more sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in relation to clothes. This article reveals that our social practices approach encouraged research participants to positively uptake pro-environmental clothing choices. Thematic qualitative analysis of a small sample of participants’ wardrobe audit interviews, informal discussions, reflective videos, and reflective diaries illustrates nuanced and dynamic individual responses to the workshops and other project interventions. Nuances are contingent on factors including styles, creativity, habits, and budgets. We argue that, in order to mainstream the benefits of our approach, it is necessary to normalise approaches to clothing and style that sit outside of, or adjacent to, mainstream fashion, including clothes making, mending, and modifying practices.
View
Vidas invisíveis: Como os estudos de administração exploram a travestilidade e transexualidade?
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2024
Objetivo: Esta pesquisa busca aprofundar-se nas temáticas gênero, diversidade e trabalho, tendo como objetivo revisar a literatura que explora a travestilidade e transexualidade nos estudos de administração e gestão. Método: Para alcance do objetivo proposto, foi realizada uma revisão da literatura, no qual três perguntas auxiliaram a compreender o estado da arte sobre a temática no cenário nacional e internacional. Resultados: As análises inicias indicam que mesmo após 16 anos da primeira publicação na área da administração no Brasil, ainda existe um número limitado de pesquisa nas revistas e eventos científicos nacionais. Além disso, a academia brasileira não acompanhou o período de crescimento sobre a temática que iniciou em 2017 na literatura internacional. Nos últimos anos, nas pesquisas internacionais, nota-se a tendência de trabalhos com um olhar voltado as organizações, que avaliam os benefícios e vantagens das políticas de inclusão e defesa da liberdade de gênero e a discussão sobre temas mais sensíveis. Conclusão: este estudo amplia a discussão sobre minorias, gênero, sexualidade, suas interseccionalidades e o trabalho. Além disso, apresenta como os estudos da área de administração estão abordando esta temática, identificando lacunas teóricas e propondo uma agenda de pesquisas futuras.
View
View
View
View
A Values-Complementarity Model of Social Movement Influence on Entrepreneurship
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2024
  • J MANAGE
Social movements have long held noteworthy effects on organizations and industries by deliberately seeking to alter firms’ actions to align with the movements’ values. In the present research, we examine the possibility of non-deliberative effects of social movements on entrepreneurial activities. We posit that social movements elevate values that enhance market conditions and encourage entrepreneurship in unexpected ways. We examine this values-complemetarity process in the context of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement. Although the movement intended to delegitimize large corporations, we find evidence that it also had the complementary effect of increasing small-scale, people-centered, and community-oriented values. As such, this enhanced congruent forms of entrepreneurship. We find consistent effects of Occupy on startup growth across a range of industries. Moreover, using brewing as an illustrative setting, we identify distinctive emergent themes confirming the shift and alignment of microbreweries toward stronger community values after Occupy protests. We discuss implications for the social movement and organization literatures.
View
Acquiring Organizational Legitimacy Through Illegitimate Actions: A Marriage of Institutional and Impression Management Theories
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 1992
This article links institutional and impression management perspectives in a process model of how controversial and possibly unlawful actions of members of organizations can lead to endorsement and support from key constituencies. This model is grounded in interview, archival, and observational data concerning eight illegitimate actions attributed to members of two social movement organizations. We found that institutional conformity and decoupling illegitimate activities from legitimate structures facilitated spokespersons' efforts to use impression management tactics that shifted attention away from the controversial actions and toward the socially desirable goals endorsed by broader constituencies. As a result, these organizations used publicity generated by illegitimate actions to obtain endorsement and support from those constituencies. We discuss the implications of the model for other kinds of organizations and derive testable propositions. We also consider implications for institutional and impression management theories.
View
View
View
Institutional Contradictions, Praxis, and Institutional Change: A Dialectical Perspective
Article
  • Apr 2002
We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis - agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (centradictions)-as an essential driving force of institutional change.
View
Organizational Discretion in Responding to Institutional Practices: Hospitals and Cesarean Births
Article
  • Mar 1996
While others have tried to accommodate agency and interests within institutional theory by directly incorporating a strategic choice perspective, we propose here that institutions are primary and exist as the context within which interests operate. We argue that uncertainty provides discretion, implying that organizational influence on practice will be greatest when institutional standards are most uncertain. We examine these arguments in the context of cesarean section surgeries in hospitals with different ownership and teaching structures. As expected, we found that hospitals' characteristics were influential in determining the use of cesareans only when the level of institutional uncertainty was high, that is, when patient risk was at an intermediate rather than a high or low level.•.
View
Bureaucracy as Praxis: Toward a Political Phenomenology of Formal Organizations
Article
  • Sep 1978
Many scholars have noted the disparity between Marxian approaches to macro societal issues and neo-Durkheimian sociologies of consciousness in micro settings. The first focuses on the real structures of society, the second on the social construction of reality. Theory of formal organizations, largely in the tradition of Weber, is a good place to attempt to link these major but divergent schools. Such linkage might occur from two directions: scaling Marxism down to the level of organizational practice, and scaling micro sociologies up to the level of organizational structure. For the first of these tasks, we can use special tools from the phenomenological tradition to reinterpret Marx's category of labor into that of the Lebenspraxis of everyday organizational life. For the second task, we may reinterpret ethnomethodological and symbolic interactionist studies. Though emerging from Durkheim's work on symbolism and ritual, and though ostensibly of discrete settings, these studies are in fact conducted within formal organizations. "Rationality," "legitimacy," or "authority" are structures of consciousness as well as features of face-to-face settings; as such, their construction can be reinterpreted phenomenologically as the praxiological foundations of organizational life, the organizing out of which organizations are constituted.
View
Communication to Self in Organizations and Cultures
Article
  • Sep 1983
Two modes of communication are defined that distinguish between cultural groups: The first mode is communication in the traditional sender-receiver sense; it adds quantitatively to the receiver's knowledge. The second mode is autocommunication, communication to oneself. Autocommunication is typical of artistic and religious texts, but any text can become autocommunicational. An autocommunicational text (e.g., a novel) may be read many times over; its function, however, is not to add information in the quantitative sense, but to enhance the ego. When texts are read in an autocommunicational way, they act like mantras, they enhance. Evidence of autocommunicational texts may also be found in corporate cultures. Strategic plans, it is argued, become in many cases such mantras. Unlike previous authors, who have considered as failures plans that were not implemented, we claim that such mythical, autocommunicational planning also has its purpose: focusing of mind, goal seeking, and generating enthusiasm.
View
The Rhetoric and Reality of Total Quality Management
Article
  • Sep 1998
This article induces a model of the evolving rhetoric and reality of total quality management (TQM) in five organizations to show how institutional forces can distort the technical reality of TQM. Using interviews, organizational documents, and observation, I follow the social construction of TQM in these organizations to trace the relationship between the technical practices and rhetoric of TQM. The model shows that managers consume a rhetoric of success about TQM, use that rhetoric to develop their TQM program, and then filter their experiences to present their own rhetoric of success. Consequently, the discourse on TQM develops an overly optimistic view of TQM. The models demonstrate how individual actions and discourse shape TQM and fuel institutional forces.
View
Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies
Article
  • Apr 1986
Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Two models of cultural influence are developed, for settled and unsettled cultural periods. In settled periods, culture independently influences action, but only by providing resources from which people can construct diverse lines of action. In unsettled cultural periods, explicit ideologies directly govern action, but structural opportunities for action determine which among competing ideologies survive in the long run. This alternative view of culture offers new opportunities for systematic, differentiated arguments about culture's causal role in shaping action.
View
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
Article
  • Sep 1977
Argues that the formal structure of many organizations in post-industrial society dramatically reflect the myths of their institutional environment instead of the demands of their work activities. The authors review prevailing theories of the origins of formal structures and the main problem which those theories confront -- namely, that their assumption that successful coordination and control of activity are responsible for the rise of modern formal organization is not substantiated by empirical evidence. Rather, there is a great gap between the formal structure and the informal practices that govern actual work activities. The authors present an alternative source for formal structures by suggesting that myths embedded in the institutional environment help to explain the adoption of formal structures. Earlier sources understood bureaucratization as emanating from the rationalization of the workplace. Nevertheless, the observation that some formal practices are not followed in favor of other unofficial ones indicates that not all formal structures advance efficiency as a rationalized system would require. Therefore another source of legitimacy is required. This is found in conforming the organization's structure to that of the powerful myths that institutionalized products, services, techniques, policies, and programs become. (CAR)
View