Master Thesis

Master Thesis Student: Linus Wilhelm Schumacher Student ID: s1012223 Supervisor: Dr. Joost Luyckx 2nd examiner: Prof. Ayse Saka-Helmhout Date: 12.08.2019 How do organizations in the automotive industry make use of discursive strategies in the arena of social media to retain legitimacy in times of crisis? Keywords: legitimacy struggle, social media, discursive strategy, automotive industry, discursive antagonism 1 Abstract In recent times the automotive industry has become the centre of attention through various scandals across several brands around the world. The wide reaching debate and criticisms about the companies’ actions have left a struggle for preserving their legitimacy. The public scrutiny, especially done by the media has left the companies to search for viable options of reaching out to the public in an attempt for re-legitimation. With the emergence of the Internet and the social media, new possibilities of connecting to the public in a more direct manner have been established. Henceforth the aim of this research project is the investigation on which discursive strategies the automotive companies actually use in the new arena of social media in an attempt to regain their legitimacy. The analysis of the collected data has shown that besides the various angles and influences of discourse on legitimacy, one particular strategy appeared to stand out in the arena of social media. The discursive antagonism, as identified by Luyckx & Janssens (2016), is the strategy where the actor aims to portray a positive self-image (purification) and undermines the credibility of the opposing actor (polluting). Previous studies in this field of research have taken into account the traditional media, where the information flow is a one-way street and an active interaction between the company and the public is impossible. However, this thesis researches how the use of social media has overcome this hurdle and allows for an interaction, where the discursive antagonism can be used as a powerful tool for (re)legitimation. I Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratefulness to everyone from the Masters of Business Administration program at Radboud University, who guided and supported me throughout the process of completing this research project. My deepest gratitude goes to my supervising tutor Dr. Joost Luyckx who has constantly supported and encouraged me during the process of conducting this research project. He generously dedicated much time to our one-to-one meetings throughout the entire year, providing me with great assistance. Further, I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Ayse Saka-Helmhout as the second reader of this master thesis. I am gratefully indebted to her for her very valuable comments on this research project. Additionally I would like to thank my family and friends for their continuous encouragement and support throughout the journey of researching and writing this master thesis. II Table of content 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 LEGITIMACY STRUGGLES OVER CONTESTED CORPORATE UNDERTAKINGS 1 1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION 2 2. THEORY 4 2.1 LEGITIMACY 4 2.2 LEGITIMACY FROM A PROCESSUAL PERSPECTIVE 5 2.3 DISCURSIVE PERSPECTIVE ON LEGITIMACY 7 2.4 LEGITIMACY STRUGGLE AND SOCIAL MEDIA 9 3. METHODOLOGY 11 3.1 CASE SETTING 12 3.2 INITIAL COLLECTION 14 3.3 DATA OVERVIEW 16 3.4 CODING 17 4. FINDINGS 18 4.1 CRITICISMS BY NEWSPAPER 19 4.2 DEADLY AUTOPILOT-ACCIDENT 21 4.3 DELIVERY ISSUES 23 4.4 DISPUTE WITH JOURNALISTS 25 5. DISCUSSION 28 5.1 LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH PROJECT 31 5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 31 6. CONCLUSION 32 7. REFERENCES 34 8. APPENDIX 39 APPENDIX I. TWITTER FOLLOWER DISTRIBUTION WITHOUT ELON MUSK 39 APPENDIX II. TWITTER FOLLOWER DISTRIBUTION WITH ELON MUSK 39 APPENDIX III. CRISIS A 40 APPENDIX IV. CRISIS B 43 APPENDIX V. CRISIS C 45 APPENDIX VI. CRISIS D 49 APPENDIX VII. CODING PATHWAY 54 III 1. Introduction On a global scale, the automotive industry has recovered itself from the economic crisis (Mohr et al., 2013). More so, post-crisis in 2012 industry profits were significantly higher (EUR 54 billion) than in the pre-crisis year (EUR 41billion), with future prognosis indicating further increase by EUR 25 billion (Mohr et al., 2013). Despite these bright looking profit figures, the automotive industry has experienced over the past decades severe set backs and scandals, often publically denunciated by the media, which left the companies with severe harm to their legitimacy. To encounter damage to their legitimacy, the companies continuously seek for new ways of connecting with their customers and with the emergence of the Internet and the introduction of social media, new opportunities have arisen for the companies in the automotive industry. The aim of this research therefore is to investigate what discursive strategy is being used by the organizations in these new forms of social media, in order to restore and strengthen their legitimacy, especially after a scandal or crisis. Empirical studies on both, social media and legitimacy from a scientific research perspective are apparent to be limited. This can be reasoned with the fact that large social media platforms, like Twitter (2006), have been around for no more than a decade (Gerbaudo, 2018). Yet, it must be acknowledged that some empirical studies have been carried out in the field of corporate legitimacy. 1.1 Legitimacy struggles over contested corporate undertakings The majority of studies focusing on legitimacy struggles over corporate actions and practices have studied processes of (de)legitimation in the arena of traditional media. Henceforth it is indispensible to acknowledge the existing research that has been carried out prior to this research project, as it allows constructing a knowledge foundation. The study of Joutsenvirta and Vaara (2009) was conceded in an attempt to shed some light into this unexplored area of research. The study outlines that a central part of building legitimacy for such controversial corporate actions is achieved through argumentation. Hence, they argue that people do not use language only to make accurate representations of certain objects, but rather to accomplish things (e.g., Alvesson & 1 Kärreman,2000; Potter & Wetherell,1987). Therefore, the criticism, which is the act of de-legitimation and self-protective reactions to the critique, the act of (re)legitimation, are to a large extent discursive and therefore must be looked at under detailed discursive analysis (Rojo & Van Dijk, 1997). Suddaby & Greenwood (2005) thus argue that by applying a discursive approach it is possible to see legitimacy being constructed mainly through discursive resources, i.e., “through linguistic means used to construct some aspect of reality from a particular perspective” (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Henceforth instead of attempting to understand through which policies and actions firms try to establish or maintain their legitimacy, the researchers claim that it is necessary to investigate through which discursive strategies various actors construct (il)legitimacy (Vaara et al., 2006). Complemented was the study by Leca et al. (2009) who argue in their report that legitimacy can be seen as a process (Leca et al., 2009), implicating that it is not a stagnated or fixed social perception, but much rather a constant negotiation (Tamm et al., 2010) between the public and the company. Hence, ‘persuasion/translation /narration’ are seen to be key processes for discursive legitimation to be achieved in regard to process orientated research. When taking a discursive perspective, it is possible to define legitimation as a process when resources used by agents create a sense of legitimacy when focusing on particular discourses (Vaara & Tienari, 2008). The new communicational room created through social media opens possibility for an organization’s legitimacy to be formed or questioned (Glozer et al., 2018). Social tolerability is a fundamental component for a company’s legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), where nowadays social media has the strategic potential to achieve it through the use of a discursive approach (Schultz et al., 2013). 1.2 Research question The main objective of this thesis is to conduct research that contributes mainly to the importance of social media for organizational legitimacy. Previous studies with similar focus have already been carried out. The study of Etter et al. (2018) was conducted with the aim to investigate how social media data can be used for the measurement of social legitimacy. Conclusively they do not favour the social media approach over the traditional data method, however see the distinctive merit in both of them. Glozer et al. 2 (2018) researched how to better comprehend the processes of organizational legitimation in social media communications. By examining two organization-led social media settings, they were able to find the process of legitimation, which is commonly treated as separate and distinct constructs to be interrelated and overlapping. The last study to be acknowledged is the research of Barros (2014) who found that through social media blogs, companies are able to encounter their discursive struggle by influencing the legitimacy not only as a company but also as a respected voice. This means that rather than just accepting media scrutiny, companies can use social media platforms to generate their own discourse. As previously mentioned in more recent times, studies on both the use of social media and legitimacy have been conducted. Yet, there has no research been carried out with the intent to

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