This paper examines the attempts by the North American accounting institutes to develop a new market in e‐commerce assurance based on their claims to professional expertise through the WebTrust project. Employing actor‐network theory in an in‐depth longitudinal field study, we investigate how WebTrust was originally developed and promoted as a seal of business‐to‐consumer assurance, which largely failed to generate support in the marketplace. Proponents were subsequently able to generate more interest in the eyes of managers of online organizations by reshaping WebTrust as a flexible set of principles and criteria for systems advice and business‐to‐business assurance. Our analysis suggests that attempts to expand the accounting profession's domain of expertise reflect a trial‐and‐error process where the outcome achieved may be far from the vision that motivated the institutes into undertaking the project in the first place. We further show that the initial network of support for such projects can be quite fragile and dynamic as various actors reposition themselves around the shifting meanings attributed to the project.

This paper provides insights into the dynamics underlying the construction of controllability boundaries surrounding the financial audit function, through an analysis of the sensemaking narratives of former members of Arthur Andersen reflecting upon the collapse of their firm. Our focus is how members, in light of their firm’s downfall, assess the abilities of public accounting firms to control financial audit work and auditor behaviour (i.e., organizational controllability), and the abilities of outside, non-accounting bodies to regulate financial auditing (i.e., regulatory controllability). The investigation is predicated on interviews with twenty-five former partners and employees of Arthur Andersen, mostly in Canada and the United Kingdom. Our qualitative analysis indicates that a majority of interviewees adheres to the view that financial auditing can best be controlled via a network of bureaucratic and clan controls established within accounting firm organizations, without any direct involvement from the part of regulators. A number of interviewees, though, consider that a reinforcement of outside regulation is necessary to discipline financial auditors. In spite of these differences, the vast majority of interviewees consider that financial auditing is controllable (via organizational or regulatory control), which is of interest given their spatial and emotional proximity from the controversial collapse of their firm. Also, most participants do not see the professional association as a useful or relevant party in helping the professional accounting community manoeuvring in times of turmoil. Important governance issues, ensuing from our analysis, are discussed.

We investigate how activist short sellers (AShSs) expose publicly listed firms in an increasingly popular form of “research reports” openly denouncing alleged frauds, flawed business models, accounting irregularities, and wrongdoings. We focus on six AShSs that issued research reports that often led to a strong negative market reaction. Our empirical analysis exploits both qualitative and quantitative methods for a comprehensive data set of 383 research reports targeting 171 unique firms, and 3 firsthand interviews with AShSs. Drawing on Aristotle's rhetoric, we first examine how AShSs use narratives in striving to convince other investors that the target firms are overvalued. Specifically, we search the documents produced by AShSs for stylized narratives related to credibility‐based (ethos), emotions‐based (pathos), and logic‐based (logos) rhetorical strategies. To assess the impact of these strategies, we examine the extent to which the AShSs' rhetorical strategies resonate in 3,665 press articles. As expected, the press often refers to logos‐based arguments. Interestingly, the press also frequently brings up pathos‐based and ethos‐based statements. Considering the importance of the press in shaping investors' opinions, our study points to AShSs' narratives playing a major role in policing financial markets. Theoretically, we show that AShSs, as dissenting market participants, produce narratives that go beyond the language of formal rationality—as they strive to reveal new information and frame it persuasively, in order to destabilize the extent of trustworthiness surrounding target firms.

In 2021, a social movement rallying retail investors unexpectedly shocked Wall Street, forcing a prominent multi-billion-dollar hedge fund to shut down one year later, after incurring massive financial losses. Social movements in financial markets have significantly developed in the wake of the 2007–09 financial crisis, resulting in the emergence of various collective actions. We analyze one recent example of such action undertaken by the r/WallStreetBets (WSB) community on Reddit, which disrupted the stock prices of several “meme stocks” (e.g., GameStop) by disseminating influential investment narratives. We analyze the 150 most upvoted Due Diligence posts on WSB and interview eight members of its community. We find that a popular expertise in investment narratives emerged, developed, and was propagated on this digital platform. WSB authors' claim to popular expertise is made in a hybrid language combining traditional financial expertise with an accessible and entertaining writing style, complemented by references to pop culture. Our analysis brings out a growing resentment among retail investors about the unfairness of financial markets, and its role in mobilizing them for collective action that challenged the existing order of things. Yet this widespread resentment did not spontaneously translate into a meaningful, sustainable collective action initiative. Our thesis is that the development of popular expertise played an instrumental role in the formation of WSB's collective action initiative targeting several perceived investment opportunities.

Evidence suggests that society still does not view whistleblowers as wholly legitimate—despite legal protections now offered in some jurisdictions, such as the United States. Drawing on a discourse analysis (i.e., an examination of statements), we investigate the well‐publicized stories of seven whistleblowers from 69 sources, including books, first‐ and second‐hand interviews, websites, and videos. Our focus is to examine how whistleblower discourses can build legitimacy by more tightly defining the whistleblower role and demonstrating its alignment with social norms. Using whistleblower self‐narratives, we identify four narrative patterns: (i) Trigger(s)—the event(s) leading to whistleblowing; (ii) Personality traits—whistleblower's morality, resourcefulness, and determination; (iii) Constraints—barriers requiring regulatory and organizational change; and (iv) Consequences—the longer term positive impact of the whistleblowing act. These patterns rely on symbolic, analogical, and metaphorical framing to allow others to better understand the role of whistleblowers and enlist their support. Exploring a data set of 1,621 press articles, we find indications that these narrative patterns resonate in the media—which provide a form of support and may be instrumental in legitimizing the whistleblower role. Grounded on these results, we develop a legitimacy construction model of the whistleblower role, that is, a representation of how role legitimacy is produced and sustained. From this model, we identify a number of important areas for future research.