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This article explores the influence of duality in institutional logics on internal accounting, with a focus on a Polish public university. More particularly, we answer the research question: how does illegitimacy risk arising from the divergent pressures of the institutional environment impact management accountings in this institution?

This paper seeks to uncover intricacies of notions of internal legitimacy façade, decoupling and counter-coupling in practice. It explores details of organizational responses involving management accounting aimed at reducing illegitimacy risk. Achieving good organizational access, the authors adopt a qualitative case study approach involving contextual appreciation/document analysis/participant observation/discussion with key actors: facilitating building upon theoretical argumentation through finding things out from the field.

The authors uncover and discuss organizational solutions and legitimizing manoeuvres applied, identifying four adaptation tactics in the struggle to support legitimacy that they term ‘ceremonial calculations’, ‘legitimacy labelling’, ‘blackboxing’ and ‘shadow management accounting’. These can be seen in relation to decoupling and counter-coupling. Ceremonial calculations supported the internal façade. Shadow management accounting supported pro-effectiveness. Legitimacy labelling and blackboxing helped bind these two organizational layers, further supporting legitimacy. In interaction the four tactics engendered what can be seen as a ‘counter-coupling’ of management accounting. The authors clarify impacts for management accounting.

The usual limitations of case research apply for generalizability. Theorizing of management accounting in relation to contradictory logics is advanced.

The article illuminates how management accounting can be understood vis-à-vis contradictory logics.

Elaboration of the tactics and their interaction is a theoretical and empirical contribution. Focus on a Polish university constitutes an empirical contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on conceptualizing the origin of legitimacy, the legitimation process and its trustworthiness toward the people, regulators, society and stakeholders. In achieving the purpose of the study, an inclusive research gap concerning the roles of the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) as a Shariah regulatory authority or an internal mechanism of Shariah Governance Framework (SGF) in the development and formation of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) would also be addressed.

The paper implements an analytical approach to investigate the legitimation process of SSB, and its presence, significance, as well as credibility to the stakeholders.

This study proposes an additional authority of legitimacy, namely, SSB/Shariah regulatory authority, along with regulators, professionals and people. These could be derived from the internal mechanism of Shariah Governance (SG) practices of IFIs. The study also proposes another type of legitimacy (ethical/Shariah legitimacy) that derives from the organizational SG practices through its internal mechanisms. The formation of SSB is mandatory and more significant for the isomorphic identification of IFIs, SG system, legitimacy and broader acceptance to stakeholders.

The rational argument shows that SSB legitimates the overall functions of IFIs, SG practices, processes and structures. It is more apposite because it has substantial validity, dominance, recognition and acceptability along with three external bodies. Besides, IFIs and their SG do not have the proper value to the general people, society, regulators and other stakeholders without the legitimization of SSB. Thus, theorists and academicians may consider SSB as the fourth party of legitimacy along with three legitimacy providing authorities (regulators, professionals and people).

The paper focuses on illustrating and extending the border knowledge concerning the legitimacy from SG and how do SSBs legitimize IFIs and enhance their credibility to the general people, government, society and other stakeholders. The paper first clarified the internal legitimacy concerning SGF and contributed to the area of Islamic finance, legitimacy, institutional theory, legitimacy theory and internal legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of how the regulatory foci of the multinational enterprises (MNE) headquarters and the subsidiary lead to internal legitimacy crises. This paper discusses how pragmatic and moral legitimacy crises affect relational social capital.

The paper is conceptual.

This paper highlights the importance of internal legitimacy as well as the motivational orientations of headquarters and subsidiaries for the functioning of MNEs. Internal legitimacy management is crucial for building relational social capital. This study proposes that legitimacy crises are particularly likely to occur in cases of goal incongruence between headquarters and subsidiaries. This study postulates that organizations with a promotion-oriented institutional logic are concerned by the absence of pragmatic legitimacy processes. In contrast, given their aim of protecting the status quo, prevention-oriented institutional logic MNEs are concerned about the absence of moral legitimacy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to explore the relationship between regulatory focus, internal legitimacy and relational social capital.

This paper aims to assess whether internal procedural justice is directly and indirectly through self-legitimacy connected to external procedural justice among Taiwanese police officers.

Survey data used in this study were collected from 316 Taiwanese police officers in 2019. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine the direct and indirect relationships between internal and external procedural justice.

Supervisors' internal procedural justice is directly related to the external procedural justice rendered to the public by police officers. Internal procedural justice also directly enhances officers' perceptions of internal legitimacy and external legitimacy. Greater senses of internal legitimacy are then accompanied by higher external procedural justice.

Survey data collected from a non-random sample of officers limit the study findings' generalizability. Organizational justice in the form of supervisory justice is instrumental in promoting officers' perception of self-legitimacy and their delivery of fair treatment to the public.

The present study represents a first attempt to link two important veins of studies in recent policing literature, organizational justice and officer self-legitimacy. This study provides needed evidence to support the value of supervisory justice in policing in a non-Western democracy.

The purpose of this research is to study how communication executives perceive their internal and external legitimacy, how they reflect on recent developments in their work, and which future challenges they perceive as being important.

The approach takes the form of in‐depth interviews with communication executives.

Communication executives have a distinct strategic managerial role within their organizations. The executive role involves three different performances: the organizational leader; the communication leader; and the communication manager. Executives perceived high external legitimacy, whereas internal legitimacy varied between organizations, and status and formal position were both dynamic and subject to negotiation. The communication technology development, termed as a “revolution”, has considerably affected executives' work. Future communication challenges such as globalization and organizational change were discussed.

Recent changes have strengthened the roles of the communication executives. Internal status and legitimacy appear to be dependent on the attitudes of the other executives. These relationships and the emerging executive roles will be an important basis for study in future research.

Internal legitimacy was clearly an issue of negotiation, which is important for practitioners to consider. Acting out the educational role, working with communication support and the coaching of managers, and initiating and pursuing strategic organizational issues may be means by which communication executives are further able to enhance their internal legitimacy.

New insights with regard to the legitimacy, practice and self‐perceptions of communication executives are provided. This is the first study of Swedish communication executives, adding to the knowledge base derived from studies from The Netherlands, UK and USA.

Building strong human brands inscribed in social and symbolic recognition is a strategic issue for branded individuals. In the context of film director human brands, this study aims to examine the respective influences of the economic and critical performance of films, on the one hand, and the professional legitimacy bestowed by internal stakeholders, on the other, on changes in human brand identity. Contrary to what is generally believed, it shows that the specific legitimacy bestowed by producers and the institutional legitimacy bestowed by elite peers mediate the effects of performance on changes in human brand identity. Brand extension (i.e. new films) incongruence and initial human brand identity moderate the effect of performance on legitimacy.

This study is applied to film director human brands and to their extensions through the films they make. Data were collected for 81 films, including information before and after the brand extension occurs, to capture changes in human brand identity and extension effects.

The results show that economic performance influences both specific and institutional legitimacy, whereas critical performance only impacts institutional legitimacy. These relationships are moderated by initial human brand identity and congruence. Both types of professional legitimacies also help reinforce human brand identity.

The study challenges the role of performance on the building of human brand identity and shows that the latter is co-constructed by the branded individual and internal stakeholders. It also enhances the key roles of global incongruence and genre incongruence in the model.

The purpose of this study is to propose a model of knowledge legitimation in organizational learning focusing on the relationship between power politics and legitimacy.

This study adopts the approach of a conceptual discussion.

This study developed an organizational learning model that explains how actors exercise their power and how knowledge is legitimated through politics. The author identified various factors that shape the politics; these factors trigger, enhance, facilitate and inhibit power exercise. This study also identified which type of power (influence, force, domination and discipline) leads to which type of legitimacy (pragmatic, moral and cognitive). Furthermore, this study found that power politics and organizational learning are interrelated; actors’ powers bestow legitimacy on knowledge, and knowledge enhances the power of related actors.

This study identified the set of factors that shape actors’ power exercise in organizational learning as well as their associated mechanism and illustrated how they lead to knowledge legitimation. The author also revealed the relationships between actors’ power and legitimacy of knowledge. Finally, this study elaborated on the findings of prior studies concerning politics of organizational learning.

Theoretically, the paper aims to provide locus of legitimacy as a framework to not only introduce a multidimensional perspective on legitimacy but also expand the understanding about resource acquisition strategies of social enterprises. Empirically, the authors test the theoretical predictions by using cases from South Korea and Taiwan. Practically, the authors intend to assist chief executive officers (CEOs) of social enterprises in their effort to secure valuable resources and provide policy implications so that both South Korea and Taiwan learn from each other.

The authors use case methods to find evidence of the proposed theoretical framework. The initial search for target companies showed that social enterprises in South Korea and Taiwan were ideal samples. In-person, email and phone interviews were conducted on CEOs, and archival data on institutional environments and various aspects of social enterprises were collected. Collected data were analyzed using the locus of legitimacy framework to find out how different emphasis on locus of legitimacy impacted critical decisions of social enterprise, such as human, financial and network resources.

As predicted in the locus of the legitimacy framework, the analyses confirmed that locus of legitimacy did explain critical decisions of social enterprises in South Korea and Taiwan. First, significant institutional forces existed, shaping social enterprises behavior. For example, Taiwanese Jinu showed that greater emphasis was given to internal legitimacy, while South Korean Sohwa was higher in external locus of legitimacy. Such differences systematically impacted choices made on resource acquisition strategies. Jinu showed a greater similarity to those of for-profit companies, aligning key decisions of resource acquisition strategies to achieve financial viability as a top priority. However, Sohwa, though financial performance was still important, put more emphasis on meeting institutional demands from South Korean Government.

This study is one of early studies that attempts to understand the structure of legitimacy faced by social enterprises. The authors argue that organizations can play a more proactive role in securing legitimacy. The authors believe that locus of legitimacy framework complements the existing understanding about legitimacy in institutional theory. By introducing a multidimensional perspective about legitimacy, the authors add additional explanations about how firms exposed to different institutional forces can have diverse alternatives in resource acquisition strategies.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of member identity and its dimensions of power, urgency, external legitimacy, internal legitimacy and interest, on satisfaction and behavioural intentions in fitness centres.

Two studies were designed. In Study 1, data were collected from fitness centre members (n = 225) and structural equation modelling used to examine the dimensions of fitness centre member identity and its subsequent effect on satisfaction and behavioural intentions. In Study 2, interviews exploring member identity were conducted with members (n = 9) and managers (n = 7) and a content analysis contrasted their perceptions of power, urgency, internal legitimacy, external legitimacy and interest.

The results of Study 1 support the multidimensional construct of member identity and its positive influence on both satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Satisfaction mediated the relationship between member identity and behavioural intentions. In Study 2, managers and members expressed similar perceptions of the member identity dimensions: low power; urgency is issue-dependent; external legitimacy is recognized; members are perceived as legitimate; and most members exhibit high interest in their membership.

This study provides a deeper understanding of how member identity contributes to long-term relationships between members and fitness centres. It extends the body of consumer behaviour literature in the context of fitness centres.

The predominant narrative is that contemporary organisations, motivated by economic-rationalist aspirations, adopt cloud applications on the premise of achieving cost-savings and efficiency gains. However, how they actually adopt and rollover such new or emerging technologies may be influenced by acts, patterns and processes of institutional legitimacy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics surrounding decisions on how specific cloud applications are adopted from the context of institutional theory, with a particular focus on the concepts of coupling and decoupling.

To examine this phenomenon, two qualitative case studies, using a reflexive research approach, of an Australian and a Swedish university have been undertaken, both of which adopted commercial cloud applications for e.g. e-mail, collaboration and storage (as examples of software as a service) at different points in time. One of the universities was known for its early adoption of cloud applications, but had decelerated further deployment of such services, while the other, despite its conservative reputation, has made rapid strides in this regard.

The findings of the dual case studies reveal that organisations, contrary to economic-rationalist claims, may or may not decide to adopt particular commercial cloud-based offerings for the support of core operations, on the basis of how they perceive their institutional legitimacy being affected by a complex network of influential actors, both internally and in the external spaces. Therefore, this paper offers an institutional theory-based discourse and rich illustrations on how the role of technology is played out in enhancing relationships between an organisation and such actors in terms of legitimacy focusing acts of coupling and decoupling.

In the analysis and findings the authors, in a novel way, illustrate how organisations strive for: institutional legitimacy through acts of coupling, and the revelations of consequential decoupling. The value is based on a rich case description, analysis and application of institutional theory.