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Engaging, Distancing and Surrendering: Moral Legitimation of Controversial Organizational Decisions in the Media

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Abstract

Although there is a vast body of work on legitimacy, we still have a limited understanding of the discursive aspects of moral legitimation. This is surprising considering the increase in morally laden societal discussions, for example related to understanding gender, rights and regulations during a pandemic, political scandals and ethics of global business amongst others. In particular, from an organization studies perspective, we lack knowledge on how journalists negotiate moral legitimation of controversial organizational decisions such as closures or shutdown decisions related to global industrial restructuring. Therefore, drawing on the critical discourse studies tradition, we examine the media coverage of controversial shutdowns in Finland over the past 2 decades. Our analysis suggests three moral legitimation types: moral engaging, moral distancing and moral surrendering. These types involve specific discursive moralization practices and strategies, and they each paint a different picture of the moral options, responsibility, and inevitability in these decisions. These types can be found in the same texts supporting each other, but they also help us understand how legitimation may involve a pattern where the most explicit reflections (moral engagement) are followed by more indirect (moral distancing) and less apparent but very powerful (moral surrendering) forms of legitimation. By so doing, we also offer a heuristic that can, with due caution, be used for analyzing other texts on adverse effects of globalization or events that might include moral and ideological conflicts.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely wish to thank Prof. Eero Vaara (University of Oxford). The paper has benefitted greatly from his input. We would also like to thank Prof. Paul Adler (University of Southern California) for his comments on an earlier version of the paper.

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  1. Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Niina Erkama

  2. Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Jo Angouri

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Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection process and analysis were coordinated and performed mostly by the first author. Both authors wrote and rewrote working versions and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Erkama, N., Angouri, J. Engaging, Distancing and Surrendering: Moral Legitimation of Controversial Organizational Decisions in the Media. J Bus Ethics (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05571-1

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