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This paper aims to explore how historical context influences the content and selection of rhetorical legitimation strategies. Using case study method, this paper will focus on how insurance companies and labor tried to defend their legitimacy in the context of enactment of Medicare in the USA. What factors influenced the strategic (rhetorical) decisions made by insurance companies and labor unions in their institutional work?

The study is empirically grounded in archival research, involving an analysis of over 9,000 pages of congressional hearings on Medicare covering the period 1958–1965.

The authors show that rhetorical legitimation strategies depend significantly on the specific historical circumstances in which those strategies are used. The historical context lent credibility to certain arguments and organizations are forced to decide either to challenge widely held assumptions or take advantage of them. The authors show that organizations face strong incentives to pursue the latter option. Here, both the insurance companies and labor unions tried to show that their positions were consistent with classical liberal ideology, because of high respect of classical liberal principles among different stakeholders (policymakers, voters, etc.).

It is uncertain how much the results of the study could be generalized. More information about the organizations whose use of rhetorics the authors studied could have strengthened our conclusions.

The practical relevancy of the revised paper is that the authors should not expect hegemony challenging rhetorics from organizations, which try to influence legislators (and perhaps the larger public). Perhaps (based on the findings), this kind of rhetorics is not even very effective.

The paper helps to understand better how organizations try to advance their interests and gain acceptance among the stakeholders.

In this paper, the authors show how historical context in practice influence rhetorical arguments organizations select in public debates when their goal is to influence the decision-making of their audience. In particular, the authors show how dominant ideology (or ideologies) limit the options organizations face when they are choosing their strategies and arguments. In terms of the selection of rhetorical justification strategies, the most pressing question is not the “real” broad based support of certain ideologies. Insurance company and labor union representatives clearly believed that they must emphasize liberal values (or liberal ideology) if they wanted to gain legitimacy for their positions. In existing literature, it is often assumed that historical context influence the selection of rhetorical strategies but how this in fact happens is not usually specified. The paper shows how interpretations of historical contexts (including the ideological context) in practice influence the rhetorical strategies organizations choose.

To cope successfully with the pressures imposed by a devastating pandemic and other challenges, companies and policymakers need to look at how they conceptualize, define, measure and operationalize “value”. This paper aims to support this conversation.

This study presents a historical review of how the value construct has been conceptualized over time, demonstrating that its history is one of tension and debate with conceptualizations swinging between objective (i.e. the value of something exists independent of the observers) and subjective (i.e. the value of something depends on the personal response of the observer to what is being considered) views over time.

This paper outlines the implications to researchers of value’s low construct clarity, offering suggestions designed to exploit rather than ignore the duality of the value construct. Instead of thinking of the value construct as being subjective or objective, this study recommends that scholars consider value’s objectivity and subjectivity as being interrelated and complementary. The paper recommends that researchers use both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in studying this construct.

A major limitation of this paper is the word count limitation restricting the extent to which this paper could explore a more comprehensive list of the conceptualizations of value throughout history.

This paper presents practitioners with a nuanced understanding of value that should assist those interested in examining the worth of investments with observable expenses but less quantifiable outputs.

The authors have not found a similar analysis of the various conceptualizations of value.

Based on a review of professional staff (PS), which includes research managers and administrators, in 54 academic publications, I propose a novel definition for this category of staff: ‘degree holding university employees who are primarily responsible for developing, maintaining and changing the social, digital and physical infrastructures that enable education, research and knowledge exchange’. The proposed definition facilitates the development of new research questions that target the level of the organisational fields of higher education and science, to complement research on the university and individual levels. This view supports the study of the contributions of PS to higher education and science. I anticipate that such a broader focus will help to counter and nuance accounts of ‘administrative bloat’ by focusing on how PS as a group shape and are shaped by the organisational fields of higher education and science, rather than dismissing them as superfluous or parasitic.

This study aims to examine the relationship between institutional logics and specifications quality, and how this relationship is mediated by the legitimacy of the procurement process and stewardship behaviour.

This study draws on insights from institutional logics theory, and legitimacy and stewardship behaviour literature. We conducted an extended literature review to gain a comprehensive understanding of “institutional logics” and their manifestations in organizational contexts, utilizing the 2000–2024 data collected from the EBSCO, Scopus and Web of Science databases, complemented with Google Scholar. We gather that institutional logics manifest in several forms, and that while some organizations may thrive on a single logic, in certain contexts institutional logics can manifest in combinations – “multiple logics or hybrids”. Based on this understanding, we developed testable research hypotheses, predicting the influences of institutional logics – professional logic, efficient service logic and delivery (market) logic, on legitimacy, stewardship behaviour and specifications quality. We then carried out an empirical study, adopting a quantitative cross-sectional survey design with a self-administered questionnaire to test the hypothesized relationships. The empirical data were obtained from 162 procuring and disposing entities in Uganda and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique.

The study findings reveal that institutional logics exert a strong positive effect on the legitimacy of the procurement process and on stewardship behaviour, which, in turn, both positively influence specifications quality.

The study findings have implications for theory and practice. The study findings provide useful insights that support the conceptual and theoretical development of institutional logics theory and applications in procurement literature. In addition, the study findings enhance procurement managers’ understanding of the mechanisms through which institutional logics can foster specifications quality. However, considering the fact that the study was conducted in a single country context, and focused on the public sector only, the findings of the study might not be generalizable globally.

This study contributes to established knowledge about quality management and procurement by examining the legitimacy of the procurement process and stewardship behaviour of those involved in procurement processes as mechanisms through which procuring entities are able to use institutional logics to enhance specifications quality. In addition, the study highlights areas for future research that may be explored to increase understanding of the value of institutional logics in ensuring specifications quality, and the link between specifications quality and the general performance of procuring entities.

This study explores how a small minority of social entrepreneurs break free from third sector constraints to conceive, create and grow non-profit organisations that generate social value at scale in new and innovative ways.

Six narrative case histories of innovative social enterprises were developed based on documents and semi-structured interviews with founders and long serving executives. Data were coded “chrono-processually”, which involves locating thoughts, events and actions in distinct time periods (temporal bracketing) and identifying the processes at work in establishing new social ventures.

This study presents two core findings. First, the paper demonstrates how successful social entrepreneurs draw on their lived experiences, private and professional, in driving the development and implementation of social innovations, which are realised through application of their capabilities as analysts, strategists and resources mobilisers. These capabilities are bolstered by personal legitimacy and by their abilities as storytellers and rhetoricians. Second, the study unravels the complex processes of social entrepreneurship by revealing how sensemaking, theorising, strategizing and sensegiving underpin the core processes of problem specification, the formulation of theories of change, development of new business models and the implementation of social innovations.

The study demonstrates how social entrepreneurs use sensemaking and sensegiving strategies to understand and address complex social problems, revealing how successful social entrepreneurs devise and disseminate social innovations that substantially add value to society and bring about beneficial social change. A novel process-outcome model of social innovation is presented illustrating the interconnections between entrepreneurial cognition and strategic action.

This study investigates how the interrelated elements of organizational roles – activities, motives, resources and relationships – are mobilized to construct a code of conduct for the proxy advisory (PA) industry in Europe.

This qualitative study uses archival documents from three consecutive regulatory consultations and 16 interviews with key stakeholders. It analyzes how different stakeholder groups (i.e. PA firms, investors, issuers and the regulator) perceive and mobilize the elements of PA firms’ role to construct the accountability regime’s boundaries (accountability problem and action, and users and providers of accounts).

This study shows how PA firms, investors, issuers and the regulator refer to the perceived motives behind PA firms’ activities to construct an accountability problem. The regulator accepted the motives of an information intermediary for PA firms’ role and required PA firms to develop a corresponding accountability action: a code of conduct. PA firms involved in developing the code of conduct formalized who is accountable to whom by aligning this accepted motive with their activities, relationships, and resources into a common role.

The study highlights how aligning role elements to reflect PA firms’ common roles enables the construction of an accountability regime that stakeholders accept as a means of regulation. Analyzing the role elements offers insights into the development and functioning of accountability regimes that rely on self-regulation. We also highlight the role of smaller regional firms in helping shape transnational accountability regimes.

Africa has the most deaths from infections yet lacks adequate capacity to engage in vaccine development, production and distribution, the cornerstone of efficiently managing and eliminating several infectious diseases. Research has scarcely explored the role of institutional logics in vaccine development, production and distribution, collectively known as end-to-end vaccine manufacturing. This study aims to explore how institutional logics influence firms to engage in the vaccine manufacturing value chain in Africa.

We conducted multiple case study research using five vaccine manufacturing firms from four African countries in three regions. Qualitative interviews were conducted among 18 executives in 5 vaccine manufacturing firms.

We identified that the state, corporate and market institutional logics disparately influence the different parts of the vaccine manufacturing value chain. These institutional logics co-exist in a constellation that also shapes the organizational forms. Their constellation has dominant logics that guide behavior, while subdominant and subordinate logics influence behavior to a limited extent. The findings show that institutional logics are a function of contextual factors, such as historical events, technological changes and pandemics.

The study developed a typology that identifies vaccine manufacturing firm archetypes, institutional logics and their constellations underpinned by contextual factors. The findings have implications for firms and policymakers, as they may guide the end-to-end vaccine manufacturing interventions adapted for their regions.

This paper analyses the establishment and evolution of a public oversight body (POB) – the Egyptian Audit Oversight Unit (AOU) – and its implications for local auditing firms and practices.

Primary data were gathered from 34 semi-structured interviews (including follow-up ones) between 2014 and 2020. Secondary data was obtained through publicly available documents and internal memos. Drawing on Debord's (1967) Society of the Spectacle, the insights focus on the POB's conception, materialisation and evolution in a context characterised by weak regulatory structures.

Through a series of acts, the findings reveal how the AOU first accepted the image of “international best practice” oversight (the “metaphorical”), followed by the construction of the local structure and décor replicating a United States (US) style POB archetype (the “transformational”) by primarily relying on visible processes/procedures. Yet, these mechanisms emphasised the spectacular nature of oversight, with little improvement for practice and limiting itself to “cracking down” on smaller local firms. A final stage (the “performative”) reveals how the AOU seeks to expand its activities beyond its original mandate without challenging the image-driven nature of its oversight.

The paper offers two key contributions. First, it reveals how actors, through a combination of symbolic and tangible measures, create a new performative reality of public oversight. Second, it advocates Debord's “spectacle” to complement other theoretical lenses, with a view to illuminating the materialisation stages that bridge the gap between proclaimed oversight policies and actual practices (including conscious and unconscious omissions) within a given political economy context.