1,721,122 research outputs found
Repairing legitimacy through discourses: insights from the Volkswagen's 2015 diesel scandal
No full textPurpose – This study explores how corporate discourses enact legitimation strategies aimed at repairing pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995) after a scandal involving sustainability, namely the Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel scandal. Design/methodology/approach – By drawing on the discursive nature of legitimacy (Phillips et al., 2004), this study conducts a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) to identify how the scandal is depicted and which semantic, grammatical and lexical features characterise discourses. It then relates discourses and their features to legitimation strategies that help repair diverse types of legitimacy. Findings – To repair pragmatic legitimacy, discourses on a few actors and processes enact strategies of creating monitors and avoiding panic. Such discourses include grammatical features only. To repair moral legitimacy, discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of apology, trust, and integrity, enriched with grammatical and lexical features, mobilize disassociation, excuse, justify and restructure strategies. Discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of corporate qualities, history and future strategy help repair cognitive legitimacy by enacting an avoiding panic strategy. Grammatical, lexical and semantic features characterize such discourses. Originality/value – This study offers insights into the connection among discourses, relegitimation strategies, and legitimacy types by combining the discursive nature of legitimacy with critical discourse analysis. It also contributes to the growing literature on how organizations face the legitimacy challenges raised by scandals involving sustainability. Research implications – The study reveals the potentials of critical discourse analysis to bring out from texts practical modes of communicating, and specifically those discourses and features of discourses that serve legitimacy purposes
Elements of Quantitative Rewriting
Full text linkWe introduce a general theory of quantitative and metric rewriting systems, namely systems with a rewriting relation enriched over quantales modelling abstract quantities. We develop theories of abstract and term-based systems, refining cornerstone results of rewriting theory (such as Newman's Lemma, Church-Rosser Theorem, and critical pair-like lemmas) to a metric and quantitative setting. To avoid distance trivialisation and lack of confluence issues, we introduce non-expansive, linear term rewriting systems, and then generalise the latter to the novel class of graded term rewriting systems. These systems make quantitative rewriting modal and context-sensitive, this way endowing rewriting with coeffectful behaviours
On the Schwartzkopff-Rosen Principle
No full textHume’s Principle (HP) states that the cardinal number of the concept F is identical with the cardinal number of G if and only if F and G can be put into one-to-one correspondence. The Schwartzkopff-Rosen Principle (SR Principle) is a modification of HP in terms of metaphysical grounding: it states that if the number of F is identical with the number of G, then this identity is (strictly, fully, and immediately) grounded by the fact that F and G can be paired one-to-one (Rosen 2010, 117; Schwartzkopff Grazer Philosophische Studien, 82(1), 353–373, 2011, 362). HP is central to the neo-logicist program in the philosophy of mathematics (Wright 1983; Hale and Wright 2001); in this paper we submit that, even if the neo-logicists wish to venture into the metaphysics of grounding, they can avoid the SR Principle. In Section 1 we introduce neo-logicism. In Sections 2 and 3 we examine the SR Principle. We then formulate an account of arithmetical facts which does not rest on the SR Principle; we finally argue that the neo-logicists should avoid the SR Principle in favour of this alternative proposal
Enterprise Risk Management and resilience in SMEs during COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Italian dealerships
No full textCOVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in organizations’ strategic behaviour, from identifying and mitigating specific risks to increasing business resilience. The object of this chapter is to investigate how Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) practices help increase small and medium-sized Italian dealerships strategic and operational resilience, through supporting them to tackle the challenges raised by the disruption and effectively safeguarding their organization’s operational performance. The research relies on in-depth interviews made to professionals of ten companies and on extant frameworks that inform the findings interpretation. The results show that, as defender type firms, the companies investigated initially undervalued COVID-19 crisis effects on their business. Despite this, they transformed their business models to ensure their survival and adapted their risk management processes during and following the shock to build business resilience against future disruptions. The study offers brand new empirical evidence of ERM and resilience within SMEs and provides professionals with a self-assessment checklist on their resilience building capability
Earnings management research: Italian convergence towards U.S
No full textFacing the current convergence of Italian accounting research towards American accounting research, with
specific reference to the stream of earnings management, the present paper aims at verifying if this
convergence can be read as such institutional homogenization theorized in new institutional sociology
(DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Since accounting research can be viewed as an organizational field, immersed
in the institutional setting of universities, the paper analyses the homogenization path of Italian EM research
towards American one and detects the isomorphic mechanisms that drove such homogenization. To achieve
its aims, the paper develops an historical comparison to highlight differences and similarities in the
evolution of Italian and American EM research, according to international comparative accounting history.
Such a comparison allows detecting those coercive, mimetic and normative pressures that drove the
convergence of Italian EM research towards the dominating American EM research
The effect of GRC Systems on Environmental Decoupling
No full textThis study investigates the influence of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) systems on the phenomenon of environmental decoupling, defined as the misalignment between firms’ environmental disclosure and actual performance. Drawing on agency and stakeholder theory, we examine whether board oversight of climate risks, crisis management systems, and an-ti‐corruption procedures reduce the disclosure–performance gap. Using a panel of 924 Europe-an companies across 20 countries and 18 industries (2015–2024), we find that board oversight and crisis management systems are positively associated with environmental decoupling, suggesting symbolic rather than substantive governance. In contrast, anti‐corruption procedures significantly mitigate decoupling, highlighting the importance of binding and enforceable governance mechanisms. The findings contribute to the debate on the credibility of sustainabil-ity reporting and offer implications for scholars, practitioners, and regulators seeking to strengthen the alignment between communication and operational realities
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