Legitimacy in Organizational Institutionalism

Legitimacy is a central concept in organizational institutionalism. The term ‘legitimacy’ dates back to the dawn of organization theory; however, for most of the past century, research on legitimacy emerged only slowly and was fragmented across several distinct social science literatures. Since 1995, however, the body of relevant scholarship has grown rapidly and in a variety of directions. Much of this new literature (like much of the literature that preceded it) has been highly theoretical, invoking legitimacy as an explanatory concept rather than examining it as an empirical property. Empirical accounts, to date, have focused on exploratory case studies of legitimacy being gained or lost, while only a handful of investigations have employed legitimacy as a variable in hypothesis testing. Perhaps because of this heavy skew toward theory development versus theory testing, the legitimacy concept has exhibited substantial plasticity as it has evolved from its earliest institutionalist usages (e.g., Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Meyer & Scott, 1983). As Wright (1985: 292) has observed, ‘the process of concept formation is always simultaneously the process of concept transformation,’ and legitimacy has been no exception. Nonetheless, despite its diversity, the literature on legitimacy displays more than enough coherence and commonality to merit an integrative review. This chapter is organized as follows. Our exploration begins with an overview of past theoretical and empirical research on legitimacy. This discussion includes some basic suggestions on the dimensions, sources, and subjects of legitimation, as well as on key legitimation processes, antecedents and consequences. Second, we consider the relationship between legitimacy and two other types of social evaluation that have recently gained prominence in organization studies, namely status and reputation. Finally, we conclude with several recommendations for advancing legitimacy research in the future.