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This paper aims to explore the use of narrative instruments, mainly storytelling, to sell the privatization of State‐owned enterprises (SOE) to the general public by their CEO.

The paper uses a semiotic analysis approach. It uses specific semiotic analysis instruments: Greimas' actantial model and Propp‐Bremond function model. These main instruments can be backed on time by other devices. The analysis is centered on the president's letters in the pre‐privatization period of Canadian SOEs.

The paper finds evidence of the use, by the CEO, of discourse in general and specifically accounting discourse to advocate for the privatization. The paper also finds that the general structure of storytelling in the presidents' letters studied implies the use of narrative instruments to surreptitiously convey specific messages in accordance with the surrounding ideology.

This paper studies only SOE that had been privatized. However, top managers of every SOE are facing the same legitimating problematic. The context is strictly Canadian. Therefore, further research may examine Canadian non‐privatized SOEs or foreign SOE, privatized or not.

Privatization is a political decision, i.e. being decided ultimately by citizens. Therefore, CEOs of SOEs do not have to intervene in the debate using their privileged standpoint. Moreover, they will not do it except if backed by politicians promoting the same interests, although tacitly. Citizens must be aware of the manoeuvres done to orientate them toward the “good” decision.

The paper shows that the apparent objectivity of the financial results can be used to promote political agendas. It says that accounting is not a pure reflection of reality but a language used to promote specific interests. It also shows that accounting is telling stories that are used in other parts of the annual report, such as the president's letter.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of semiotics analysis to better understand the annual report. It starts with the idea that the annual report is telling stories to the reader. As a form of novel, it can be analysed with the same instrument.

The goal here is methodological. It is to propose an organized body of techniques that will allow anybody to conduct analysis from it. Therefore, one example is used uniquely to illustrate the method. The advantages of semiotics over content analysis are numerous. Content analysis remains quite trivial (counting words), while semiotics analysis takes into account the structure of the story at many levels.

Framed by the categories of Aristotle's rhetoric, a method is developed that is replicable with a limited background in the source disciplines. The results suggest that the annual report is clearly telling stories and respond quite positively to this kind of approach.

Although it is often discussed as a general issue, there has so far been no proposal of an integrated method for analysing accounting narratives over content analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the foundations of profit and then consider the central role of the profit in the society inspired by the accounting practice, through its influence in the social construction of the accountant's competency, and of the use accounting profession itself.

Inspired largely by the sociology of the professions, this paper also borrows from classical economic theory to understand the contradictory role and functioning of the conventional notion of profit in the society.

The paper presents the accountant as the master and great academic of this convention, and the profit as constituting for him a key resource in establishing an undisputed consensus around his competency based on a social valorization. This sacralization originates from the emptying of the economic concept while referring constantly to it. Therefore, the meaning is noisy and then, can be manipulated.

The profit is the main product sell by the accounting profession and the accounting notion most widely discussed in the society. Therefore, to understand its social functioning is essential to understand the social role of accounting and the social statute of accountants.

Corporate governance is more than disciplining managers to produce more value for the shareholders. It must include how the organization influences other social institutions in order to impose its view or legitimize its procedures. The purpose of this paper is to give the concept of governance its full meaning.

This paper describes some of the essential networks between the corporation, as an organization, and other social institutions. It also tries to separate the level at which these networks function, while proposing some categories to understand the specificity of the organization in regard to individuals or the society all included in a discussion of the managerialism.

The paper considers the other side of the institutional theory, showing that the enterprise is, at least, influencing the functioning of the society, as much as the society influences the enterprise. However, in this period still dominated by the agency theory, this kind of analysis had not been developed very much yet.

This paper situated itself in the scotoma of the theories customarily used in accounting or management. These theories are interested to present the enterprise as passively supporting the weight of social pressures. The paper's originality is to focus on what is habitually left in the blind spot of those theories using works that have a best audience in political sciences than in management.

Legitimacy is defined as the ability to exercise authority without resorting to open coercion. It is an essential asset for firms seeking to reach and maintain profitability. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to present the case of the Canadian banking industry, which has been highly criticized during the last decade for its record profits, low level of risk taking, high fees and buoyant CEO compensation packages. More specifically, this research aims to analyze the general public's perceptions of the industry during a 50‐month period, starting with the first strong reaction to recurrent announcements of record profits. It also seeks to look at industry reactions as a response to bank bashing.

The case study in this paper was conducted in two steps. It first analyzed public perceptions by studying the content of a sample of newspaper articles on the Canadian banking industry from 1996‐2000. It then examined the industry's reactions by reviewing the documents found on the web site of the Canadian Bankers Association.

The study shows that the crisis faced by the banking industry was of limited but sustained intensity. The industry used a mixed strategy, justifying itself through its public discourse and mounting a program to inform and educate the Canadian public on the effects of economic factors in their lives. The banking industry limited its reactions to Sethi's first‐level strategy found in the literature.

The paper highlights how the general public perceive profit levels in the Canadian banking industry and how legitimacy is clearly an issue in this context.