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This study illuminates how organizational actors use images in their struggle to define a contested industry. By leveraging social semiotics and visual rhetoric, we examine how multimodal texts (combining words and images) are used to label and reframe an industry using technical, environmental, human-rights, and preservation-of-life criteria. Building on theories of legitimation, we find that for this industry, contesting attempts at legitimacy work are escalated along a moral hierarchy. We offer an approach for examining how actors draw from broader meaning systems, use visual rhetoric in multimodal texts, and employ dual processes of legitimation and de-legitimation.

Despite research on legitimacy, fairness, and justice, there is a paucity of knowledge of how moral legitimacy becomes institutionally constructed in relation to and between stakeholders – both evaluators and those evaluated, human or non-human, in time and space. To understand the microfoundations of these processes, the authors examine transcripts from Alberta oil sands regulatory review hearings and associated media coverage from the 1960s to present day. The authors find six framings of fairness that respond to broader challenges to the moral legitimacy of this industry, while also dynamically evolving its regulatory framework.

Bill Freudenburg’s concept of recreancy is used as a frame for explaining processes that perpetuate questionable regimes of emergency response planning. The specific instance of tar sands upgrading in Alberta, Canada, is used as a case in point. When recreancy is institutionalized so that the results correlate across permitted hazardous facilities, it must be concluded that recreancy is less of a situational response than a normative dynamic.

This chapter examines similarities in government policies that have accelerated and privatized the extraction of offshore oil, coal, and oil sands on public lands in the United States and Canada, as well as the arguments used to justify those policies. Sociologist William Freudenburg argued that the diversion of public resources into private hands was made possible by a second diversion, the diversion of attention. Freudenburg, with Gramling, later applied this concept to U.S. offshore oil leases, noting that when it came to offshore oil, the myth of “energy independence” was often used to justify policies that were actually antithetical to the concept, promoting further dependence on fossil fuels. We extend the double diversion concept from offshore oil to U.S. coal and Alberta oil sands, noting the similarities in both the policy changes and the diversionary frameworks. The frameworks also divert attention from the increasing risks associated with energy extraction.

This study aims to foster a deeper understanding of socio-ethical shareholder activism by outlining the corporate campaigning strategies of a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) and by assessing their impact on both institutional investors and the practices of two multinational companies. As we move into a world where shareholder ownership is becoming more democratised, shareholder activism is gaining prominence in the USA, Europe and Asia, opening new avenues for participation in corporate governance by stakeholders such as NGOs who have traditionally been uninvolved in corporate decisions.

The article adopts a qualitative methodology and case study research design. It relies on semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents and participant observation.

First, the study sheds light into the ways in which NGOs are connecting themselves to the financial sector. It argues that they can pursue their political goals by framing their arguments in a way that emphasises the short-term financial risks/benefits for investors. Secondly, it demystifies the term “shareholder activism”, transforming it from an action tool belonging only to big and powerful institutions, to a tool which gives other stakeholders such as NGOs and ordinary people a real stake in companies’ affairs. What is more, the study highlights the divergent nature of institutional shareholder activist intervention in the USA and the UK.

Given the generally long-term nature of shareholder campaigns, which can sometimes span over several years, it could be beneficial to adopt a longitudinal research design. Future research can endeavour to focus on a number of different campaigns over a period that exceeds three years.

The research has implications for NGOs adopting a shareholder activist campaigning model and for policy makers aiming to encourage investor stewardship.

The fact that the research field of NGO socio-ethical shareholder activism is relatively new and under-explored by academia, coupled with the growing incidence of the phenomenon in the UK and across the world, as well as its potential benefits for society as a whole, renders further investigation into the topic necessary.

To critically consider the role that environmental sustainability plays in Sport for Development and Peace's (SDP) conceptualization of development in Indigenous communities in Canada. To do this, the chapter presents a critical analysis of one of the most prominent SDP organizations in Canada, Right To Play (RTP), and its relationship with extractives companies that support RTP initiatives.

In the first part of the chapter, we discuss the role of environmental sustainability in SDP approaches around the globe. In the second part, a textual analysis of RTP's documents is conducted to consider how environmental sustainability plays a role in its promotion of development in Indigenous communities throughout Canada.

Key findings of the research are presented and critically analyzed. The textual analysis of RTP documents shows that there is currently little consideration of environmental sustainability in the promotion and description of RTP's programs that operate in Indigenous communities in Canada. In addition, RTP's connections to extractives companies raise questions about the potential future directions.

The limitations of a textual analysis approach are discussed and the need for future research in this area is outlined with specific reference to how SDP programs might promote environmental sustainability.

Why do significant cultural anomalies frequently fail to generate change in institutional logics? Current process models offer a number of direct ways to enable the creation and diffusion of ideas and practices, but the resistance to adoption and diffusion, something so emphasized by the old institutionalism, has not been incorporated as directly in those models in a way that allows us to answer this question. Therefore, we theorize three retrenchment processes that impede innovation: cultural positioning, behavioral resistance, and feedback shaping. The ways in which these processes work are detailed in a case study of one high profile cultural anomaly: oil production and environmental management in Alberta’s oil sands from 2008 to 2011. Implications for the institutional logics perspective and understanding logics in action are discussed.