Accounting for your actions: How stakeholders respond to the strategic communication of environmental activist organizations

James D. Patterson · Myria Watkins Allen

23 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Applied Communication Research

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Public Relations and Crisis Communication Rhetoric and Communication Studies Management and Organizational Studies

Abstract

This study examined how stakeholders perceive the legitimacy of impression management strategies potentially used by environmental activist organizations following their “illegitimate”; actions. “Illegitimate”; actions are those which are seen as undesirable or violate societal norms. A sample of 150 individuals (50 activist organization members, 50 government officials, and 50 college students) completed a questionnaire containing four hypothetical scenarios describing “illegitimate”; actions. Each scenario was followed by eight message strategies. Respondents rated the perceived legitimacy of each message strategy. Stakeholder groups differed significantly in how legitimate they thought the strategies of Bolstering, Diffusion of Responsibility, Denouncement, Justification, Aesthetisizing, Necessitating, Transcendence, and Intimidation were in accounting for the questionable actions. A significant difference due to level of severity was found for the Justification strategy. Implications for environmental advocates as well as researchers interested in extending the organizational‐level impression management literature and institutional theory are discussed.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

References

1977Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony 2004The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields 1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 1990Foundations of social theory 1993The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis.1991Foundations of Social Theory 1991The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis 1992The new institutionalism in organizational analysis

Cited by

2023Terrorist attacks and environmental social and governance performance: Evidence from cross‐country panel data 2019The discursive strategy of legitimacy management: A comparative case study of Google and Apple’s crisis communication statements 2014Crisis Communication Response and Political Communities: The Unusual Case of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford 2007SaveDisney.com and Activist Challenges: A Habermasian Perspective on Corporate Legitimacy 2017Stakeholder Communication

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.