Author : Keith Michael Hearit
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (925 download)
Book Synopsis Organizations, Apologia, and Crises of Social Legitimacy by : Keith Michael Hearit
Download or read book Organizations, Apologia, and Crises of Social Legitimacy written by Keith Michael Hearit and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corporations charged with wrong doing often find it in their best interests to "go public" and deliver an apologia. This study integrates the study of corporate apologia with another value-oriented theory of organizational behavior: corporate social legitimacy. The primary research question that drives this research is "How do corporations use discourse rhetorically to manage crises of social legitimacy?" A generic analysis was performed on eleven twentieth-century apologia in an effort to determine: (1) the strategic names corporations utilize to give an account of their wrong doing; (2) the values to which corporations attempt to demonstrate adherence; and, (3) the rhetorical tasks common to corporate apologists. Rhetorical analysis reveals the presence of two "forms" of corporate apologia: apologia delivered for competence reasons, and apologia articulated because of a breakdown in the corporation's relationship with the community within which it operates. Furthermore, this study has shown that in their apologetic discourse, corporations commonly use "appearance/reality" dissociations to demonstrate their adherence to the values of honesty, responsibility, self-control, and competence--the very values corporations are charged to have broken. This study concludes that apologia performs a social function: it reaffirms faith in the current societal hierarchy.