The legitimising role of accounting in a public debate: A case study of the Swedish candidacy for hosting the Olympic winter games 2026

Abstract: In this thesis we examine the legitimising role of accounting in a public debate. We draw upon a case study of Sweden's candidacy for hosting the Winter Olympics in 2026, in which the budget for the games played a central and at the same time problematic role. The Olympic candidature turned out to be a complex procedure, where competing interests, power dynamics and low confidence in the budget from the start characterised the process of legitimating the candidacy. Building upon the legitimacy process framework by Patriotta et al. (2011), we apply the concept 'orders of worth' to analyse the public debate and conceptualise the role of accounting in a legitimating process. We find that the role of accounting and the factors influencing it differs between the stages of the legitimating process. More specifically, we find that differing mobilisations of orders of worth affect an organisation's ability to legitimise a project to different stakeholders using accounting. In parallel, we show that the quality of current and past budgets also play a role in the legitimating process. We term this historical bias against accounting 'the broken environment', since it affected the Swedish Olympic Committee's ability to legitimise the candidature using the budget. Thereby it influenced both the role of accounting and the legitimation process.