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Accreditations and certifications are crucial mechanisms through which organizations and organizational practices gain acceptance and appreciation within their relevant fields or contexts. Accreditations concern meeting standards of acceptable behavior. Certifications concern the quality of specific products, services, or other forms of performance. They both operate through legal and informal requirements and the monitoring of different aspects of organizational life, and influence an organization’s ability to operate within a given social context. This entry examines the social context of accreditations and certifications and the ways in which they are produced and diffused. The entry concludes by examining how accreditation and certification relate to corporate reputation, including through legitimacy and status.

This submission will explore processes of communicative institutionalism (Cornellison et al, 2015) by focusing on how the communication of a multitude of actors in media and in organisational documents, construct new meanings and practices around CSR. Here, I present some samples of data analysis of this process to illustrate the process I use to explore this. I seek to discuss this approach in this forum, so further analysis can be conducted and the paper can be constructed to meet the call for papers in Business and Society. Some of the key approaches used in this paper are: • Theoretical frame sits within institutional theory and draws on processes of structuration to move between organisational/activist claims and new meanings of CSR • Use of Barley and Tolbert’s approach to structuration and the use of periods delineated by jolts to understand and depict shifts in institutional arrangements • Toulmin rhetorical analysis of the public claims made by each of the actors involved in communicating around CSR matters in order to understand the existing institutional frames actors draw on to argue their positions around new institutional arrangements.

The Public Relations literature has long touted the need for the discipline to extend its reach into the C-Suite and to become part of the management of organisations. Studies such from the European Communication Monitor and the USC Annenberg likewise report on the reporting structure of the public relations function to the C-Suite. While the C-Suite can set the tone for how disciplines are integrated into the organisation, little attention has been paid to how other functions within the organisation use and understand the role of public relations. This is an important question as the work of public relations in narrating the organisation becomes decentralised. In large organisations, a range of organisational representatives engage with stakeholders, deal with social media, and other tasks in telling the organisation’s story that previously were able to be more tightly controlled by the public relations role. This paper reports on the teaching program developed for senior level defence personnel who were required to deal with a range of local stakeholders within the context of an international air force program. In this case, local activists, employees and media coverage had the potential to impact international relations and formal public relations efforts at Nation leader level, and billions of public funds and political support were at stake. The program engages local level leaders with military and engineering backgrounds in issues management and stakeholder and employee engagement as a means to ongoing narration of the organisation and the program at hand.

A key perspective on reputation is that of assessment. Much of the communication literature focuses on the influence organizations have on impression formation. In this chapter, however, we suggest that in order to understand reputation assessment, it is also important to understand the related concept of legitimacy. We address two approaches to understanding reputation in this chapter: accreditation and ranking. Accreditation alludes to concepts of legitimacy in which firms may acquire credibility by meeting formalized standards of certification. Ranking deals with categorizing and rating organizational reputations so that they may be assessed relative to one another.The chapter explores the various ways in which the mechanisms of accreditation and ranking operate and the role of social actors in developing and applying them. Ranking systems that provide the mechanism for comparing organizations and assessing their relative value are also explored.

The field of rhetoric can be highly useful for researchers to focus on and understand the specific textual strategies used by organizations when communicating about CSR practices. To date however, while there have been studies that consider the use of rhetoric to communicate about environmental practices, there have been few studies that have used a rhetorical analysis to consider both green communication and public response to that communication as a way of understanding public issues with organizational practice. This study seeks to address this gap by using a rhetorical analysis of both environmental communication by organizations, and the claims made by a regulatory body acting on behalf of the public about why that communication was deemed ‘greenwash’ or inappropriate. In doing so, the paper applies a rhetorical analysis to understand the grounds on which environmental communication is deemed not legitimate, and suggests that whilst all three elements of ethos should be considered when communicating a CSR practice, the element of phronesis is the most crucial element, whereby organizations must ensure that they accurately justify any claims in relation to CSR.

Thirteen nearby stars from the former University of Virginia Southern Parallax Program were tested for possible astrometric perturbations that might indicate very low mass companions. For 12 of these stars--LHS 34, 271, 337, 532, 1134, 1565, 2310, 2739, 2813, 3064, 3242, and 3418--no clear indication of any unseen companion was detected. One star, LHS 288, however, may have a perturbation meriting further investigation. These high proper motion stars are all members of the solar neighborhood, lying within 25 pc. Other than the white dwarf LHS 34, these stars are early M dwarfs (M0.5-M5.5 V). After a minimum of 50 observations spread over at least three years, the relative parallax solutions for these stars have errors less than 3 mas. Following the calculation of relative parallaxes and proper motions, time-series analyses using Lomb-Scargle periodograms tested the astrometric residuals for any additional periodic signals. An upper limit to the mass of companions that could remain undetected was estimated for each star individually., Published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, v121 p365-376, Apr 2009. Sponsored in part by NSF.

This report summarizes the activities of the VLBI Analysis Center at the United States Naval Observatory for calendar year 2008. Over the course of the year, Analysis Center personnel analyzed biweekly 24-hour experiments with designations IVS-R1 and IVS-R4 for use in-house and continued timely submission of IVS-R4 databases for distribution to the IVS. During the 2008 calendar year, the USNO Analysis Center produced two periodic global Terrestrial Reference Frame (TRF) solutions with designations usn2008a and usn2008b. Earth orientation parameters (EOP) based on these solutions, updated by the latest 24-hour (IVS-R1 and IVS-R4) experiments, were submitted to the IVS. Other activities in the 2008 calendar year included the continued submission of Sinex files based on new 24-hour experiments to the IVS. For the Celestial Reference Frame (CRF), Analysis Center personnel continued a program designed to increase the sky density of ICRF sources, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Activities included scheduling, analyzing and submitting databases for IVS-CRF experiments, and the production of global CRF solutions designated crf2008a and crf2008b. In addition, Analysis Center personnel performed research into the next generation ICRF-2 and a future high-frequency reference frame based on the VLBA K/Q-band experiments. Activities planned for the 2009 calendar year include the continued production of EOP/TRF/CRF global solutions and continued research into future reference frames., Publlished in the IVS Annual Report, p305-308, 2008.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) comprises stakeholder expectations of the social, ethical, legal, and economic impacts of an organization. These expectations and the perceptions stakeholders have of an organization's corporate social responsibility are central outcomes of business planning, management and operations, → Marketing, → advertising, → corporate communication, and → public relations. Organizations seek to be perceived to be meeting their obligations to society, thereby gaining and maintaining a license to operate. Legitimacy is a major driver of corporate social responsibility (Sethi 1979)... - A taxonomy of CSR practices

This study analyses trends and patterns in public relations literature about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through a content analysis of articles published between 1998 and 2007. The current status of the literature suggests that public relations scholars have broadened their approach to CSR from one solely encompassing communication management, as proposed by Clark (2000), to one that incorporates the management function and relationship management components of contemporary public relations thinking. The findings of the literature review suggest that there are opportunities for social responsibility to be incorporated into public relations through a process approach, which would foster stronger links between organizations, stakeholders and society.

Academic public relations in Australia appears to be entering a new phase in its relatively short history. The early model in which tertiary courses were confined to teaching-focussed institutions and conducted largely by teacher-practitioners is being supplanted by one in which the discipline is now offered in most Australian universities, is increasingly embracing research, and is being taught by staff following more traditional academic career paths. Despite the formal association with the communication discipline through ANZCA, public relations academics have increasingly asserted the independence of their discipline and in reality have very little dialogue with other strands of the communication discipline. These developments call into question the most appropriate knowledge base for public relations as an academic discipline in Australia and its proper relation to the profession (and the PRIA as the professional body). One danger associated with the assertion of disciplinary independence lies in the risk of excessive reliance on a relatively narrow body of work emanating from the more established US public relations academy, in the process ignoring much richer work in surrounding disciplines such as social theory, rhetoric, organisational communication, and business and society. The emphasis on disciplinary demarcation also seems curious during a time of growing ‘interdisciplinarity’ in the humanities and the social sciences. This paper critically reviews the construction of public relations as an academic discipline in Australia, drawing on some of the literature on academic disciplinarity to propose a repositioning of the discipline, one that is less focussed on asserting difference than on finding connections with other bodies of knowledge while maintaining close links with professional practice.

While corporate social responsibility has gained considerable academic, corporate and media attention, is it actually becoming institutionalised as a legitimate part of business? This paper investigates the relationship between corporate social performance, reputation and conformity among organisations in a population. Organisational theory suggests that by adopting similar practices, organisations gain legitimacy and support from important stakeholders. This case study investigates the institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility practice through a case study of the Australian banking industry. Since deregulation, the social impacts arising from changes to industry practice have been widely criticised. Despite this, one major bank has moved to the Number 1 reputation ranking of all Australian organisations for three years in a row. So are their responsibility practices institutionalised across the industry? The conclusion of this paper is ‘not yet’, raising a number of questions about citizenship, reputation, competitiveness and conformity. One potential outcome is that by improving the reputation of the entire population, the reputation of each organisation will also improve. I argue that through the process of institutionalising corporate social responsibility across the members of a population, the reputation of all those organisations will improve giving them a competitive advantage against other types of organisations in the same market.

In a knowledge economy where technologically mediated information plays an important role, greater understanding is required of its impact on organisational sustainability. This paper examines the link between mediated information within a global economy and its relationship to a key to long-term organisational success– legitimacy. Aligning organisational legitimacy and the demands of a range of internal and external stakeholders is a central concern for managers when challenges to legitimacy continue to arise. Particularly during times of internally or environmentally driven change, challenges are created for managers seeking to ensure their organisation avoids questioning about its legitimacy. This paper presents the proposition that the perceptions of collective opinion derived from mass media provide a lens to a global world upon which managers base decisions to protect and repair organisational legitimacy. Legitimacy is determined from a broad social arena that can cross national and international boundaries (Lomi, 2000). Experience of legitimacy concerns, therefore, are often outside the traditional realms of managerial knowledge, and experience and of local business association networks (Aldrich, 1999). While the organisational landscape has been changing, at the same time, mass media have increased the focus on bringing news about events, and interpretations of events, from a broad and even global social area (Mutz, 1998). In addition, electronically facilitated media have exposed both organisational stakeholders and managers to views and interpretations of the world more quickly and more explicitly than in previous times. This paper proposes a relationship between perceptions of collective opinion derived from mass media and organisational legitimacy in such an environment.