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The majority of legitimacy research has been conducted in low-power distance societies such as America, England, Australia, etc. We test the relative impact of normative and instrumental judgments on police legitimacy in a high-power distance society. It is hypothesized that in this context, individuals in high-power distance societies, such as South Korea, will put a larger emphasis on the instrumental model of legitimacy and less on the relational model of legitimacy.

This study examines the pathways to police legitimacy and cooperation. Using a convenience sample of Korean college students, the impact of instrumental and normative pathways on the perception of police legitimacy is examined. Based on Hofstede's (2001) power-distance theory, we hypothesize that South Koreans, with relatively high-power distance, should emphasize the instrumental pathway of police legitimacy more compared to the normative pathway of police legitimacy.

The results indicated that opposite to what we have hypothesized, South Korean college students still emphasized the normative pathways to police legitimacy more importantly. While procedural justice significantly predicted both trustworthiness and obligation to obey the police, police effectiveness only significantly predicted trustworthiness and failed to predict obligation to obey.

The majority of police legitimacy research has been conducted in the Western context. A small amount of research focusing on non-Western settings has been conducted, but still requires more attention. The current research adds to the body of police legitimacy literature in the Korean context. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

This paper explores the communication of legitimacy in the annual reports of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), focusing specifically on the function of images. The visual mode of discourse and meaning construction has to date only scarcely been explored in legitimacy research, especially in the NGO context.

Distinguishing between normative, regulatory, cognitive and outcome legitimacy, the paper inquires into the kinds of legitimacy that NGOs communicate to their constituents and the claims that predominate. Turning to research on impression management, the paper explores whether and how organizations use images as symbolic mechanisms of legitimacy. Finally, the paper considers the socio-cultural implications of these legitimation strategies for beneficiary groups, donor communities and the organizations themselves.

A qualitative content analysis of images in the reports of the eight influential members of the US-based Global Emergency Response Coalition confirms the widespread presence of legitimacy claims in NGO visual communications, with normative (especially need) and output (especially implementation) categories predominating. However, these practices are potentially contradictory; measures to increase legitimacy to and of donors result in forms of beneficiary exclusion and reduction. Strategies of impression management, namely self-promotion, ingratiation and exemplification, appear to shape these NGO representative logics.

The results of this study extend prior research into legitimacy, legitimation and impression management in and beyond the non-governmental sector by differentiating among categories of legitimacy and incorporating images as the object of analysis. In this capacity, they also support and augment the emerging literature on imagery use in NGO annual reports.

Owing to dual constraints including liability of foreignness and liability of origin when emerging multinationals internationalize, they inevitably face the challenge of overseas legitimation. However, few studies have explored how latecomers cross the threshold of legitimacy in the dynamic context of transnational operation. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the evolution process, triggers and specific strategies of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing of emerging multinationals.

Through the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Sci & Tech Co., Ltd, this study investigates the periodical characteristics of overseas legitimacy threshold crossings and the co-evolution among critical factors influencing the legitimation process in the host country.

First, it summarizes that the legitimacy threshold in the host country experiences a sequential process from pragmatic legitimacy to normative legitimacy, and finally cognitive legitimacy. It is an inevitable choice for emerging multinational enterprises to realize and sustain legitimation from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, it reveals that the triggers for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy include periodically dynamic factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as well as cross-stage spiral interaction effects. Third, it determines the specific strategies for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy, namely, replacement, upgrading and reconstruction of organizational identity, and reveals the important role of insisting on the country-of-origin Facebook in promoting the legitimation.

This study enriches the legitimacy threshold crossing literature from an evolutional perspective, especially the traditional static legitimacy research. This study also reveals the key impacting factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration – and their evolution process interacted with the legitimation process.

The emerging multinationals should break the stereotypes from developed markets in that only creating new cognitive patterns through active legitimate strategies can they truly cross the legitimacy threshold in the host country. The emerging multinationals also need to retain their own home country legitimacy traits – Facebook and balance the relation between the image of the home country and the image of host country.

This paper investigates the process of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing for emerging multinationals in a dynamic context of transnational operation, particularly with respect to the evolutionary role played by international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration.

Underpinned by institutional legitimacy, this study explores how South African public university senior managers struggled to maintain legitimacy during an unplanned radical change process.

Gioia's grounded theory analysis approach is employed to analyse interviews with 37 senior managers of public-funded universities in South Africa.

This study's findings show that a change without proper planning severely damages institutions in all aspects of leadership's normative, empirical, moral and pragmatic legitimacy.

This study contributes to the literature on legitimacy by illustrating the importance of institutional legitimacy during unplanned social change and the factors that negate legitimacy.

Though other legitimacy models have been well developed, they do not apply to such unplanned social change in organisations. This study shows a different angle of the legitimacy crisis under unplanned social change conditions.

This paper develops a comprehensive multidimensional legitimacy model that provides a generic framework for exploring legitimacy in institutions – including the legitimacy of rules, codes, collective activities and organisations themselves. Through the use of 10 dimensions, covering concerns with fairness, efficacy, integrity, expectations, inclusive decision-making and more, the model aims to capture the full suite of distinct features that may be morally relevant in any given case. Each dimension is a continuum and can provide reasons for moral challenge, toleration or pro-active support. The model can be used to diagnose ethical risk areas, to compare reform initiatives and to inform empirical studies of descriptive legitimacy and the social licence to operate. It may also be used as an applied ethics methodology to evaluate overall institutional moral legitimacy; the paper discusses the contextual judgments required for this, including the way that some legitimacy factors can operate as defeaters, such that a serious failure on a pivotal dimension cannot be overcome by support from other dimensions.

Comprehensive primary health care (PHC) models are seldom implemented in high income countries, in part due to their contested legitimacy in neoliberal policy environments. This article explores how merging affected the perceived legitimacy of independent community health organisations in Victoria, Australia, in providing comprehensive PHC services.

A longitudinal follow-up study (2–3 years post-merger) of two amalgamations among independent community health organisations from the state of Victoria, Australia, was conducted. This article explores the perceived effects of merging on (1) the pragmatic, normative and cognitive legitimacy of studied organisations and (2) the collective legitimacy of these organisations in Victoria's health care system. Data were collected through 19 semi-structured interviews with key informants and subjected to template and thematic analyses.

Merging enabled individual organisations to gain greater overall legitimacy as regional providers of comprehensive PHC services and thus retain some capacity to operationalise a social model of health. Normative legitimacy was most enhanced by merging, through acquisition of a large organisational size and adoption of business practices favoured by neoliberal norms. However, mergers may have destabilised the already contested cognitive legitimacy of community health services as a group of organisations and as a comprehensible state-wide platform of service delivery.

Over-reliance on individual organisational behaviour to maintain the legitimacy of comprehensive PHC as a model of organising health and social care could lead to inequities in access to such models across communities.

This study shows that organisations can manage their perceived legitimacy in order to ensure the survival of their preferred model of service delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in transition environments overcome the liability of origin to gain their legitimacy in a global context.

Through semi-structured face-to-face interviews, this study investigates Bulgarian wine producers who evolve in transition environments and are looking for new means to restore their legitimacy both locally and globally.

The results show common patterns between Bulgarian wine producers to signal their legitimacy regarding the cognitive and normative pillars of legitimacy. However, in transition environments, signals of regulatory and industry legitimacy vary across firms to fit international standards and to create new local regulations.

While this research focuses on the Central and Eastern European setting, future research examining transition environments can draw from the present findings in regards to legitimacy strategies adopted in times of drastic change.

This paper has practical implications which show that during transitions, SMEs in the wine industry go back to their roots by adopting norms and traditions that have persisted over time.

This paper contributes to legitimacy theory by proposing a process model of legitimacy – when faced with liabilities, SMEs can use signals of legitimacy to communicate their adherence to the stakeholders’ expectations.

Dominant quality standards are present in all industries. Implicit in their use is the assumption that once adopted, there is little or no reason to replace them. However, there is evidence that, under certain circumstances, such standards do get replaced. The reasons for this action are not well-understood, either as they pertain to the displacement decision or to the selection and adoption of the alternative standard. The purpose of this study is to identify and explore these two issues (displacement and replacement) by drawing on data from the American healthcare system. This study is viewed through the theoretical lens of legitimacy theory. In addition, the process is viewed from a temporal perspective. The resulting findings are used to better understand how this displacement process takes place and to identify directions for interesting and meaningful future research.

This is an explanatory study that draws on data gathered from quality managers in 89 hospitals that had adopted a new healthcare quality standard (of these, some fifty percent had displaced the dominant quality standard – the Joint Commission – with a different standard – DNV Healthcare.

The combined literature review and case study data provide insights into the displacement process. This is a process that evolves over time. Initially, the process is driven by the need to meet customer demands. However, over time, as the organizations try to integrate the guidelines contained within the standards into the organization, gaps in the quality standard emerge. It is these gaps that motivate the need to displace standards. The legitimacy perspective is highly effective at explaining this displacement process. In addition, the study uncovers some critical issues, namely the important role played by the individual auditors in the certification process and the importance of fit between the standard and the context in which it is deployed.

The data for the propositions in this case study were derived from interviews and survey data from 89 healthcare organizations. It would be interesting to examine similar relationships with other quality standards and industries.

Our findings provide new insights related to motivations to decouple from a dominant quality standard. Results provide a cautionary tale for standards that hold a dominant market share such that perceived legitimacy of such standards is not as stable as originally thought.

This study illuminates the fragile nature of the stability of dominant standards and emphasizes the linkages between legitimacy concerns and divestiture of such standards.

Clinical governance and leadership concepts can lead to more or less successful implementations of new clinical practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Fiery Spirits, as institutional entrepreneurs can, working in a team, implement sustained change in hospital clinical practice.

This paper describes two case studies, conducted at two Swedish hospitals over a period of two years, in which changes in clinical practice were implemented. In both cases, key-actors, termed Fiery Spirits, played critical roles in these changes. The authors use a qualitative approach and take an intra-organizational perspective with semi-structured in-depth interviews and document analysis.

The new clinical practices were successfully implemented with a considerable influence of the Fiery Spirits who played a pivotal role in the change efforts. The Fiery Spirits persuasively, based on their structural and normative legitimacy and the adoption of learning processes, advocated, and supported change.

Fiery Spirits, given flexibility and opportunity, can be powerful forces for change outside the trajectory of management-inspired and management-directed change. Team members, when inspired and encouraged by Fiery Spirits, are less resistant to change and more willing to test new clinical practices.

The paper complements literature on how the Fiery Spirit concept aligns with concepts of clinical governance and leadership and how change can be achieved. Additionally, the findings show the effects of legitimacy and learning processes on change in clinical practice.