Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 473
An excuse can still defend the rule
Accounts theory distinguishes excuses, justifications, concessions, and refusals so challenged conduct can be analyzed as responsibility management, normative argument, and relational repair
Premise
When conduct no longer fits an expectation, the resulting problem is interpretive as well as operational. A missed deadline, policy breach, failed decision, or insensitive remark creates a gap between what happened and the rule by which audiences judge it. Accounts are the explanations used to manage that gap.
Marvin B. Scott and Stanford M. Lyman treat account giving as social action. An explanation allocates responsibility, interprets the act, protects or revises identity, and attempts to restore a workable relationship between actor and audience. Executive diagnosis improves when “explanation” is no longer treated as one undifferentiated response.
What the model is: Accounts and Account Giving in Knowledge →
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- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryAnalytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
- DomainConversation & Relationships
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Analytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
Organizes dimensions, distinctions, types or questions so that a situation can be examined systematically. A framework supplies structure, a typology distinguishes forms, and a heuristic offers a usable way to orient judgment.
- KnowledgeAccounts and Account Giving
- Related briefVocabularies of Motive: Test the Reasons That Close Debate