Jennifer L. Bartlett

Public relations literature has only recently drawn on institutional theory to provide insights into legitimacy that go beyond strategic organisational level processes. Many of the existing crisis management studies are approached from a strategic perspective, which have limitations in terms of how organizations manage their legitimacy in relation to broader and often changing social agendas. This study focuses on how impression management is used to deal with legitimacy gaps between organizations and public expectations that draw on an institutional theory perspective. This qualitative study examines the use of organizational accounts through a lens that marries institutional theory and impression management in order to understand how organizations manage their legitimacy. This study of accounts around legitimacy concerns of corporate social responsibility matters shows that organizations relied on their own tangible technical attributes rather than shared norms of what is considered responsible when there are no hard or institutionalised laws and regulations in place around corporate social responsibility concerns. This study offers insights into public relations concerns around impression management during institutional change and in doing so extends existing public relations approaches to crisis management.

We argue that aesthetic knowledge, which is a form of tacit knowledge of beauty and related concepts, is an important, yet under-researched, topic in the study of organizational decision making processes. The significance of aesthetic knowledge for decision making processes is derived from its universal application by humans to commonplace practices; its use as the basis of decision criteria in complex situations in which the effective application of logic and reason is limited; and its role both in assisting cognition in general and in enabling the choice of solutions generated from rational decision making processes. Despite its importance, the empirical research examining the application of aesthetic knowledge in organizational decision making processes is limited. Further detailed study of aesthetic knowledge in the context of organizational decision making processes is required to extend the recent movement in the field aimed at examining the role that extrarational, human-centered factors play in organizational decisions.

Purpose – Despite a long-standing interest in the responsibility of organisations, transgressions do occur. This raises questions about how these occur when there is so much focus on the legitimacy of organisations in being responsible. In this chapter, we draw on metaphors of communication as transmission and meaning making to consider the communicative approaches to CSR. Methodology/approach – This chapter is a conceptual chapter drawing on literature review and cases to illustrate insights. Findings – We suggest that while transmission models focus on highlighting responsibility, it is within the meaning making approaches that opportunities for responsibility and irresponsibility emerge as organisations and society negotiate the boundaries of organisational behaviours. Implications – We suggest implications for how the meaning and criteria of ethical corporate behaviour are constructed. Originality and value – CSR has not been studied extensively through a communication lens. An extensive literature review of various communication approaches to CSR that forms the foundation of this chapter offers important insights into how responsibility and irresponsibility are constituted through communicative efforts of organisations.