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The objective of the study is to explore legitimation dynamics in a public–private integration process and to gain insights on the specific role of CSR in triggering public–private logics.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is part of firms' strategy in gaining legitimacy from their stakeholders in a merger context. However, little is known about the role of CSR in triggering diverse dynamics from public or private logics during post-merger integration. This study aims at exploring the specific role of CSR in triggering such diverse logics. A qualitative research design based on a single case study of a public–private merger of two French listed companies in the urban planning sector was opted for. The analysis was pursued in real time from the signing of the agreement and then over two years.

The results show that public–private legitimation is a process that proceeds in stages. The authors emphasize the key factors that characterize it: align on external concerns: reflecting societal and institutional pressures (public legitimation); readapt to make sense internally in relation to the merger through managerial innovation (private legitimation) and CSR as a form of corporate self-storying: combining the social and societal aspects of CSR within the organization (hybrid legitimation). Three major actions were identified in activating a CSR legitimation strategy: identifying and responding to local needs; building a unified brand, culture, and employee commitment to the organization; and creating sustainable programs.

The first major contribution is linked to triggers influencing legitimation dynamics and in particular the role of CSR operating as a legitimation strategy in the merger integration process. A second theoretical contribution is linked to the evolutionary nature of the post-merger integration process. The processual study shows how stakeholder legitimacy demands can escalate and change over time.

First, three major actions were identified as key steps in activating a CSR legitimation strategy (identifying and responding to local needs; building a unified brand, culture, and employee commitment to the organization; and creating sustainable programs). These missions can be understood as key steps for managers in implementing CSR within an organization in a post-merger integration context. Second, this study increases our comprehension of legitimation as a dynamic micro-process. The different stages described in the study can be considered by the managers involved in the merger process as learning experiences to understand the complex phenomenon that is the integration process.

This study enriches the legitimacy-as-process perspective in providing insights on the specific role of CSR in triggering public–private logics.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the role played by three archetypal constructs pertaining to the individual sustainability-oriented entrepreneur, namely prior knowledge, sustainability orientation and sustainability intention, in legitimation behavior and explores their strategic utility.

The author studies legitimacy-seeking behavior in the case of ten sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. A qualitative case study approach is used, capturing evidence of legitimation behavior in the startup phase through interviews, participant observation and documentation analysis.

Prior knowledge and sustainability orientation appear to offer little value beyond their role as necessary factors in maintaining legitimacy. Both appear to have limited strategic value for legitimation in comparison to sustainability intention. Intention as a construct embodies the “paradox” of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship, and learning to successfully overcome this paradox to strategically utilize intention in legitimation is crucial for these entrepreneurs.

Knowledge of these factors could assist sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs in strategically utilizing these factors as agency when dealing with diverse stakeholder expectations to achieve their enterprising goals. Strengthening knowledge on factors important for legitimacy is pertinent in supporting this shared value approach to entrepreneurship.

Little theoretical or empirical attention has been paid to the complexity of strategic legitimation behavior of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. This paper provides novel empirical insight into what role these archetypal factors play in legitimation behavior and how they can be strategically utilized.

This paper aims to explore the complete process and underlying mechanism that social enterprises obtain legitimacy during interactions with stakeholders from theoretical integration of institutional theory and organization ecology perspective.

Based on theoretical classification, this paper selects six typical Chinese social enterprises and conducts a multi-case analysis.

The study finds that social enterprises aim at legitimizing single entity or industry and shaping stakeholders’ cognitive boundary simultaneously. Therefore, by adopting constrained cooperation and competition activities, social enterprises use normative isomorphism to achieve personal legitimation and combining ecological niche construction, social enterprises achieve organizational legitimation. By adopting fragmented cooperation-dominant or competition-dominant activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism supplemented by competitive isomorphism or population structure creation to obtain industry legitimation. By adopting dynamically integrated coopetition activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism and reflexive isomorphism to reach field legitimation.

This paper proposes a mechanism model that the coopetition with stakeholders influences the legitimation process, identifies four stages of social enterprise’s legitimation process and the types of legitimacy obtained in each stage and fills the gap of Chinese indigenous social enterprise research.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on strategies and “spoken discourses” used to construct legitimation around change at the individual level. Comparing changes in financial accounting, budgeting and performance management at two government levels (Westminster and Scotland), it explores the use of legitimation strategies in the implementation of accounting change and its perceived outcomes.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews, six legitimation/delegitimation strategies are used to code the transcribed data. Patterns with the perceived outcomes of change are explored.

Changes introduced to enhance “rational” decision making are often received as pushed by some source of authority. Regardless of the interviewees’ background and level, the results suggest that for radical accounting change to embed, it is necessary for it to be perceived as rational, rather than merely driven by authorisation-based pressures. Conversely, incremental change is associated with modest legitimation via rationalisation and delegitimation based on pathos and rationalisation.

The study deals with actors’ legitimation strategies and perceptions of change. These may not correspond to actual substantial change. Taken-for-granted ideas often remain “under the radar”, therefore care must be taken in interpreting the results. The focus of the empirical study is on the UK, therefore conclusions are restricted to this context.

Existing studies struggle to explain organisations’ heterogeneity and practice variation; this study sheds light on how individual legitimation, which may lead to different organisational results, occurs. Differences in how actors interpret changes may be based on their position (central vs devolved administration) and on their ownership of the changes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of legitimation of international new ventures (INVs) from an emerging economy and the effect such ventures have on the process of creation and legitimation of a new industry in that economy.

It is a longitudinal ethnographic case study. Following an inductive theory building approach, data were collected over an 11-year period via in-depth interviews, participant observations and unobtrusive data.

Data reveal three different contexts in which legitimation takes place: legitimation of the new industry and of the new venture domestically and internationally. A new venture drives the process of industry legitimation by achieving legitimacy threshold first nationally at meso and micro levels as well as internationally. The challenge therefore for such a venture is to establish legitimacy in the absence of any precedents at the organization, industry or international levels. Unless at least one new venture achieves legitimacy threshold in a new industry there is no possibility for that industry to become institutionalized.

The authors advocate for further research at the intersection between legitimation, international entrepreneurship and emerging markets in order to further advance the emergent theory.

The data suggest that in order for an INV to achieve cognitive legitimacy and socio-political legitimacy in an emerging industry located in an emerging economy, and successfully internationalize, it shall design a robust business model targeting both internal and external stakeholders; engage in persuasive argumentation invoking familiar cues and scripts; engage in political negotiations promoting and defending incentive and operating mechanisms; and overcome the country-of-origin effect by pursuing technology legitimation strategy.

Governments and NGOs may wish to see new industries emerge but they lack the means and mandate to establish and lead them themselves, instead rely on enabling actions, such as investment in capacity building. However, building capacity for an as-yet non-existent industry in an emerging economy may prove to be counter-productive, driving a brain drain of qualified workers who are forced to migrate to find suitable work. The work leads the authors to speculate about whether there may be a role for investment in programs of industry legitimacy building in pursuit of public policy objectives.

The study puts forward a process model of new industry legitimation. The model theorizes the process of change from an initial condition in which an industry does not exist to a final condition in which it is institutionalized. The model addresses the case where the initial catalyst is the formation of an INV that is the seed for the birth of the industry. Since both the new venture and the new industry lack cognitive and socio-political legitimacies, the model theorizes temporal emergence of these at organizational and industry levels, leading ultimately to institutionalization.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the challenges of public legitimation faced by faith-based organizations (FBOs) today. The paper addresses a new approach to studying legitimation as a public and communicative process.

FBOs ' public legitimation problems are discussed on the basis of a systematic literature review and the problematization method.

The paper presents a novel typology of FBOs ' public legitimation problems, which are divided into the four categories of mission, brand and reputation, public relations and trust. It is suggested that research on FBOs and their legitimation should apply and develop the communication approach.

The paper addresses a current gap in legitimation research by reviewing the literature on public legitimation and the legitimation problems faced by FBOs. It identifies the communication approach as a significant perspective for future studies of FBO public legitimation.

Defines legitimation. Proposes six social factors or forces for analysing the current bases for legitimation in information systems development. Argues that if the directions of these forces shift, it could signal a major social change. Asserts that consideration of the concepts related to the six factors can help information systems researchers to sense emergent issues.

Several studies have recently documented projects of organizational transformation and modernization which, commonly clustered under the umbrella term “New Ways of Working” (NWoW), simultaneously entail material, technological, cultural and managerial dimensions. Academic contributions, however, have paid little attention to the mechanisms allowing such projects to progressively become legitimized in organizational discourses and practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinctive features of the legitimation process underlying the implementation of NWoW projects.

This paper relies on a longitudinal, three-year analysis of a large insurance company. Data were collected through qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews (48), periods of observation (3 months) and document analysis (78).

The paper develops a grounded and integrative framework of legitimation processes underlying “NWoW” change projects. The framework emphasizes four decisive operations of translation in “NWoW” design and implementation: translating material constraints into strategic opportunities; translating strategic opportunities into a quantitative business plan supported by the top management; translating compelling discourses around “NWoW” into an organizational machinery; and translating a transformation project into discourses of unequivocal success, conveyed by legitimate spokespeople within and beyond the organization.

Besides contributing to the understanding of a managerial fashion, which has received little academic attention so far, the paper also offers an original integrative framework to account for legitimation processes that combines two theoretical approaches – the sociology of translation and research on institutionalist work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of manipulation as a legitimation strategy. Focusing on the role of verbal communication, are integrated insights from rhetorical theory with strategic and institutional approaches to legitimacy in a study of three documents published by the “most admired” companies in the USA in 2007; General Electric (GE), Toyota, and Starbucks.

The research is based on a qualitative analysis of three documents that describe the environmental focus and policies of GE, Toyota, and Starbucks. The approach involves analyzing and synthesizing a large number of environmental claims made by these companies.

The analysis of the texts reveals a constructed organizational ethos that is combined with strong environmental focus to appear trustworthy in environmental matters in the eyes of consumers and stakeholders. Relying on four categories of environmental statements, the companies practice a form of “green” legitimation.

The research is limited by the small number of publications used as data sources, which makes generalizations problematic. It does not investigate the effects of the verbal claims.

The paper adds to the literature on organizational legitimation, providing valuable insights into manipulative legitimation. It demonstrates the need to combine insights from strategic and institutional approaches to legitimacy.

This paper seeks to explore the way charity accountants understand, interpret and legitimate or delegitimate the introduction of accounting and reporting changes (embedded in the extant charity statement of recommended practice), before these are actually implemented.

Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with accountants in large UK and Republic of Ireland charities, the manner and extent to which forthcoming changes in charity accounting are legitimated (justified) or delegitimated (criticised) is explored.

Acceptance of accounting changes in the charity sector by formal regulation may not be necessary for future required adjustments to practice to be legitimated. Using interviews carried out before the implementation of required changes, the results suggest that other factors, such as national culture, identity and mimetic behaviours, may play a major role in the homogenisation and acceptance of accounting and reporting rules. In particular, it is argued that mimetic pressures can be much more influential than regulative pressures in legitimating change in the charity sector and are more likely to lead to the embedding of change.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it explores rhetoric and legitimation strategies used before changes are actually implemented. Second, it contributes to filling a gap in charities’ research related to intra-organisational legitimation of managerial and accounting changes, illustrating institutional-field identity at work to preserve shared organisational values and ideas. Finally, the research illuminates the importance of particular contextual pressures and individual legitimation arguments during accounting-change processes.