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Cited by 614Management and Organizational StudiesPolicy Transfer and LearningGender Diversity and Inequality

Clothes Make the Person? The Tailoring of Legitimating Accounts and the Social Construction of Identity

Creed, W. E. Douglas, Scully, Maureen A., Austin, John R.·2002·Organization Science
DOI 10.1287/orsc.13.5.475.7814
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Abstract

We empirically explore the legitimating accounts for and against policies precluding workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, focusing on how agents working at both the national level and within organizations use broader cultural accounts in building their legitimating accounts in local settings. The diffusion perspective in institutional theory has portrayed how agents import “ready-to-wear” cultural accounts. In contrast, translation theory depicts how agents interpret and adapt cultural accounts as they fashion them into legitimating accounts for a local setting. An alternative would theorize accounts that are neither strictly borrowed nor idiosyncratically tailored. We advanced a third perspective, drawing on frame analysis as it is used in social movement theory. Framing theory attends to both the importance of cultural building blocks and the embedded ways in which agents relate to and shape systems of meaning and mobilize collective action to change social arrangements. We find that legitimating accounts are intertwined with the construction of social identities, which serve to legitimate, on the one hand, an account maker's participation in the discourse and set of claims, and on the other hand, the involvement of proponents and crucial audiences. We suggest that the mobilizing potential of legitimating accounts rests in part on their messages becoming “autocommunicational,” so that listeners identify themselves with the message.

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  • The majority of researchers draw upon three core conceptual articles produced by David Snow and Robert Benford in the 1980s and early 1990s.

    “The majority of researchers draw upon three core conceptual articles produced by David Snow and Robert Benford in the 1980s and early 1990s (Creed, Scully & Austin, 2002).”

    From Grounded theory: a methodological spiral from positivism to postmodernism (2007) · cites this paper as Creed, Scully & Austin 2002

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Authors
Creed, W. E. D., Scully, M. A., & Austin, J. R.
Affiliations
  • Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, 24 Quincy Road, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
  • Simmons Graduate School of Management, 409 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
  • Pennsylvania State University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Organization Science
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Published
2002-10
Volume
13
Issue
5
Pages
475-496
ISSN
  • 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-5455
DOI
10.1287/orsc.13.5.475.7814
OpenAlex
W2113250023
Cited by
614
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 47 · 2016: 31 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 54 · 2013: 39 · 2012: 34
FWCI
27.42
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Organization Science (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policy Transfer and Learning
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Diversity and Inequality
Keywords
employment discrimination, LGBT employees, social identity construction, diffusion of innovations, translation theory, framing theory, organizational change, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

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