Search results

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the management of accounts that sport for development (SFD) agencies provide.

A recognized methodology for analyzing narratives is mobilized to collate a longitudinal sample of one agency’s president’s letters. Using Greimas’s actantial model as a framework, this study analyzes role allocation through president’s letters.

The analysis of empirical data demonstrates the managerial functions of sanctioning and qualifying organizational performance and manipulating current, as well as potential, partners into becoming actors in the studied network.

This study submits that a new typology and associated roles are needed for one categories of actors. Redefining the destinator category of actors previously used in management literature with a new sender label is proposed. Adjusting our view on the roles given to actors in this category demonstrates new meaning and intent embedded in president’s letters.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of self-service technologies (SST) in two competitors and unravel the process of change in two related setups, offering a comparison as well as an association of cases.

The paper is based on two extensive case studies of SST adoption by leading retailers in a Western European country. The analysis is based on a material-discursive approach using Greimas actantial model to identify actors’ roles in the implementation process.

Results highlight the key role of technology and organizational identity as legitimizers of the change process. The findings also emphasize the role of competition in justifying change.

Due to the specific situation of the market in the country of study (both retailers share 70 percent of the grocery market), this research offers a textbook example of the role of competition in technological change. This helps to understand the role of competition in technological change.

This study explores the implementation of SST in two competitors and unravels the process of change in two related setups, offering a comparison as well as an association of cases.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss what kinds of messages about the risks of polydrug use are mediated in YouTube video blogs and on what kinds of norms and values do the vloggers base these messages.

The data consist of 12 YouTube videos where vloggers share their own experiences of the risks and harms of polydrug use. In the analysis, the actantial model of Greimas’ theory of structural semiotics was applied.

Two main types of videos were identified – sobriety and controlled use – where polydrug use has different meanings. In sobriety videos, polydrug use is presented as the heavy use of multiple substances. In the videos dealing with controlled use, polydrug use is taken as the combining of certain substances. Whereas the sobriety videos emphasized total abstinence from all substances due to their destructiveness, the videos about controlled use emphasized risk awareness when combining substances. Despite modern digital media and a new generation operating in this space, the messages of the risks of polydrug use mainly repeat those of familiar discourses.

This paper offers an analytical insight into the ways in which the risks of polydrug use are conceptualized in a YouTube context that is increasingly gaining a foothold among the youth. Greimas’ actantial model offers a fruitful tool to find semiotic meanings that hide under the surface. The model has not been applied in previous drug research.

This study uses a discursive perspective to analyze the way in which top managers legitimize change in official announcements. It focuses on the foundations of legitimacy invoked using both Weber's typology, based on modes of authority, and the conventionalist model, stressing the constitutive frameworks that justify collective action. We use a narrative approach to examine four texts intended for employees in the context of mergers‐acquisitions in the Canadian financial services sector. We look at those announcements as wedding narratives. A framework based on the canonical schema and Greimas's actantial model was applied to the texts. The analysis reveals that these narrations of corporate marriages, while describing the same event, give distinct versions of it. These distinctions bring out differences between firms in terms of the foundations of legitimacy invoked, the contribution of the various actors, and the narrative style favoured.

This paper aims to explore the use of narrative instruments, mainly storytelling, to sell the privatization of State‐owned enterprises (SOE) to the general public by their CEO.

The paper uses a semiotic analysis approach. It uses specific semiotic analysis instruments: Greimas' actantial model and Propp‐Bremond function model. These main instruments can be backed on time by other devices. The analysis is centered on the president's letters in the pre‐privatization period of Canadian SOEs.

The paper finds evidence of the use, by the CEO, of discourse in general and specifically accounting discourse to advocate for the privatization. The paper also finds that the general structure of storytelling in the presidents' letters studied implies the use of narrative instruments to surreptitiously convey specific messages in accordance with the surrounding ideology.

This paper studies only SOE that had been privatized. However, top managers of every SOE are facing the same legitimating problematic. The context is strictly Canadian. Therefore, further research may examine Canadian non‐privatized SOEs or foreign SOE, privatized or not.

Privatization is a political decision, i.e. being decided ultimately by citizens. Therefore, CEOs of SOEs do not have to intervene in the debate using their privileged standpoint. Moreover, they will not do it except if backed by politicians promoting the same interests, although tacitly. Citizens must be aware of the manoeuvres done to orientate them toward the “good” decision.

The paper shows that the apparent objectivity of the financial results can be used to promote political agendas. It says that accounting is not a pure reflection of reality but a language used to promote specific interests. It also shows that accounting is telling stories that are used in other parts of the annual report, such as the president's letter.

The aim of this paper is to understand discursive strategies used by organizations to restore their fading legitimacy. This longitudinal case study is built around two events representing a threat to the legitimacy of the pharmaceutical industry. This study describes some subtle techniques employed to restore legitimacy during those difficult periods.

This research analyzes the president's letter of the annual report using semiotic tools designed to catch the essence and goals of the narrative sections. This case study covers 20 of Pfizer most recent annual reports (1988‐2007).

The paper suggests that some narrative sections are built to protect legitimacy on two fronts. Most of the time, the discourse maintains legitimacy in front of the salient stakeholder by presenting the firm's main “object of desire” as the enhancement of shareholder's value. In a period of crisis, the narratives are built to restore legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. To do so, they substitute a screen object (related to the theme of the crisis) as the goal of the companies' action.

The annual report appears as a selling document, discussing “political issues” rather than economic rendition of accounts. However, it is impossible to expose the controversies here, and it is not the purpose of the paper.

The paper brings together multiple elements of narrative sections to show how pharmaceutical firms built their discourse to restore legitimacy by adapting their defensive texts to specific screen objects as a response to a crisis.

The purpose of this study is to understand how narratives are generated in stores.

The study design is based on ethnographies documented in 10 sports stores in the Paris region. The ethnographic method enables a precise and in situ observation of how narratives are structured. Narrative structures develop from the accommodation of the narratives specific to retailers and narratives specific to the customer.

The findings of this study identified four main narratives in retail spaces (the serial, the tale, the epic, the legend), each of which is distinguished by the commercial/non-commercial orientation of the narratives and by a superficial/in-depth modification of the narratives produced outside the store. These four narratives are characterized by the vendors’ roles and by the distinct interactions between customers and retail stores.

The originality of this study is to propose a narrative framework for retail structures. It illustrates the fact that the narrative is not solely a product of experiential marketing, but that it may be found in any retail store. From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

The original value of this study is to apply structural semiotics to analyse narratives in the store.