Dual Iconographies And Legitimation Practices In Contemporary Organizations: A Tale Of The Former Nato Command Room

In this chapter, the authors propose a theoretical lens to critically examine the iconographies of contemporary organizations. In doing so, they seek to understand how iconographies can be used to legitimize organizations. They distinguish between two iconographies – ‘image-object’ and ‘screen-object’ – and examine how they are intricately related to organizational legitimation practices. They then go on to illustrate these iconographies and their relationships in the case study of a French university that has faced intense and changing legitimacy demands. The authors investigate the relationships between these iconographies in the extreme case of the command room of the former North American Treaty Organization (NATO), as the university in question occupies the former NATO headquarters. The case study reveals how university members shifted between iconographies of ‘image-object’ and ‘screen-objects’ to legitimize their organizing practices. As a conclusion, implications for debates about sociomateriality and its relationship with organizational legitimacy are discussed.