The corporation performed: minutes from the rituals of annual general meetings

Abstract

Purpose

In this paper the annual general meetings (AGM) of corporations are conceptualized as front-stage performances and dramas where the three roles of the corporation – the shareholder, manager and director – perform the corporation as a particular type of organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Meeting ethnography conducted at four seasons of AGMs in Sweden.

Findings

The study sheds light on how the required AGM of public companies may be seen as a ritualized, legitimizing and trust-building corporate performance where the different roles of the corporation are played out in positioning procedures and where the corporation as an organizational form is enacted.

Originality/value

The topic is of this paper is clearly original. Looking at corporations from an anthropological angle, exploring foundation myths, rites and organizational cultures, have been employed earlier, but exploring AGMs from an anthropological angle, is new.

Citation

Nyqvist, A. (2015), "The corporation performed: minutes from the rituals of annual general meetings", Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 341-355. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-12-2014-0037