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Through a series of three inductive and deductive studies, I describe how spokespersons from the California cattle industry constructed and effectively used verbal accounts to manage perceptions of organizational legitimacy following controversial events. Findings of Study 1 suggest that organizational accounts are constructed by linking two forms of accounts: acknowledgments or denials, with two contents of accounts: references to institutional or technical characteristics of the organization. Findings of Studies 2 and 3 suggest that, in protecting organizational legitimacy (1) acknowledgments are more effective than denials, (2) references to institutionalized characteristics are more effective than references to technical characteristics, and (3) accounts combining acknowledgments with references to institutionalized characteristics are more effective than accounts with only one of these components. Effectiveness appears to depend on audiences' perceptions of the controversy, expertise in the area of controversy, and expectations of organizational responses. Overall, findings suggest that concepts from institutional and impression management theories may be combined to improve our understanding of organizational accounts and thus enhance models of symbolic management.
INTRODUCTION
Organizational managers engage in many activities that may be viewed as symbolic, including organizational restructuring, succession ceremonies, language development, and the design of physical surroundings (Pfeffer, 1981). Managers commonly use these symbolic activities to affect the images of their organizations and its members by providing "explanations, rationalizations, and legitimation for activities undertaken in the organization" (Pfeffer, 1981: 4). In this paper, I am concerned with the symbolic management of a specific organizational image: organizational legitimacy. Two major theoretical perspectives have described the management of organizational legitimacy: impression management theories (Goffman, 1973; Schlenker, 1980; Tedeschi, 1981) and institutional theories (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Impression management theorists have focused on how people manage their personal legitimacy by actively taking on roles, displaying social affiliations, and providing verbal explanations of behavior following image-threatening events (Leary and Kowalski, 1990). More recently, theorists have proposed that organizational spokespersons may use these same tactics to manage organizational legitimacy (Staw, McKechnie, and Puffer, 1983; Elsbach and Sutton, 1992). In contrast, institutional theorists have focused on how organizations, or even whole industries, may project legitimacy by merely adopting and maintaining widely used and accepted practices (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). In general, impression management theories have taken an active, individual-level view...