The Visual and Material Dimensions of Legitimacy: Accounting and the Search for Socie-ties

Abstract

The aim of this article is to contribute to the literature on legitimacy by investigating its material and visual dimensions. By drawing on studies on rhetoric as a means of composing visions of social order and on an historical analysis of accounts in three paradigmatic eras (Roman times, Renaissance and Modernity), it shows how symmetry in accounts constituted an aesthetic code which tied members of a community together in 'socie-ties'. We investigate the rhetorical process of ratiocinatio and explore how the visual and material dimensions of accounts provided social actors with an opportunity to explore their positions and ties within a community. This process augmented social actors' understanding of their current relations by reducing them to a series of entries into an account, thus allowing them to reflect on what it meant to be a legitimate member of a society.

Towards an Articulation of the Material and Visual Turn in Organization Studies

“…The variety of approaches employed in these papers could be comprehensively captured through Meyer et al's (2013) distinction between archeological, practice, strategic, dialogical and documenting approaches. For example, the archeological approach is represented by Höllerer, Jancsary and Grafström (2018b), Halgin, Glynn and Rockwell (2018) and Puyou and Quattrone (2018) who delve retrospectively into visual archives of newspapers, magazines and accounting practices in a quest to unravel deep meaning structures. These three articles' explorations go back in time from years through decades to eras, Puyou and Quattrone's spanning from Roman times to modernity.…”

“…These theoretical perspectives include broader fields that have recently acknowledged a need for more attention to materiality and visuality. For instance, in relation to institutional theory, Höllerer et al (2018b) see opportunities in discursive construction of institutions, Puyou and Quattrone (2018) in legitimacy, Raaijmakers et al (2018) in strategic responses to institutional pressures, and Stowell and Warren (2018) in institutional maintenance. Articles in this issue also build on and advance more specific perspectives, such as organizational framing (Christiansen, 2018), actorhood (Halgin et al, 2018), the study of devices (Arjaliès & Bansal, 2018) and designers' aesthetic knowledge (Stigliani & Ravasi, 2018).…”

“…In elaborating on dissonance as a source of novelty, the former article extends the work of Antal, Hutter and Stark (2015) (reviewed in this issue by Gazi Islam) whereas the latter article reveals some of the potentialities that manifest at the (aesthetic) surface of objects (see also the review of Bruno, 2014, by Timon Beyes in this issue). In the study by Puyou and Quattrone (2018), novelty resides in the emergence of new aesthetic codes, which transforms novelty into a representational practice.…”

“Giant Toxic Lakes You Can See from Space”: A Theory of Multimodal Messages and Emotion in Legitimacy Work

“…In the second possible type of interpretive action, the sponsor creates a message that invites recipients to compare similarity by employing analogical reasoning, a core cognitive process (Forbus, 2001), to analyze the visual-verbal elements to identify the basis for similarity : “A is like B because…” This process assumes that if two entities appear similar, there must be deeper similarities (Gibbs, 1994), such as the balance sheets and profit-and-loss accounts that illustrate pleasing ““bilateral symmetry”—the exact identity between geometrical forms or perfect equality between sums in columns” (Puyou & Quattrone, 2018, p. 737). In Figure 2, the words and images not only establish a connection, they also compare similarity: the fused image and headline invite recipients to see a visual analogy between Canada and an industrial site.…”

At the Intersection of Materiality, Organizational Legitimacy and Institutional Logics: A Study of Campus Tours

“…This research adds to the emerging field of understanding the micro-foundations of institutional theory, where scholars have started to show an interest for how institutions are enacted in the everyday practices of individuals (McPherson and Sauder's, 2013;Smets and Jarzabkowski, 2013), as well as the role of materiality (Jones et al 2013) andvisuality (Meyer et al, 2013;Puyou and Quattrone, 2018) in altering, disrupting, or maintaining institutional logics. Materiality has been conceptualized as an actor in several theoretical fields, in particular research on organizational space, Science and Technology Studies, Actor Network theories and some evolutionist views of organizations (Jones et al 2013;de Vaujany and Mitev, 2013).…”