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By drawing upon social cognitive and legitimacy perspectives, this study aims to explore the role of perceived social legitimacy as an informal institutional force that moderates the effects of female entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy and entrepreneurial tenacity on venture growth.

This study uses a data set of 308 Japanese female entrepreneurs, who are a subject of limited extant scholarly attention, to test the hypothesised relationships empirically.

Consistent with the unified framework, the study was able to identify that the acquisition of social legitimacy required by female entrepreneurs serves as a crucial safety net under which entrepreneurial self-efficacy and tenacity can significantly affect venture growth.

The study highlights that high levels of entrepreneurial traits alone are not necessarily sufficient to guarantee women’s venture growth. In doing so, this study stimulates the development of theory on the complementary role of the social legitimacy of entrepreneurship in fueling and mobilising the female entrepreneurs’ cognitive resources as the key to venture growth in the Japanese context.

Policymakers should be dedicated to implementing more gender-specific policies designed to continually cultivate women’s cognitive attributes in tandem with the promotion of social awareness to embrace entrepreneurship as a promising career option.

The originality of this study lies in stimulating a debate on the underlying heterogeneity of female entrepreneurs in the performance outcomes of two entrepreneurial cognitive attributes. By integrating the concept of perceived social legitimacy, the study can respond to Miao et al. (2017), who sought further examination of untested boundary conditions in the cognitive characteristics-venture growth equation.

This study aims to test the effect that the perceived legitimacy of influencers has on the attitude toward the brand from the consumer point of view, as well as the mediating effect brand trust has on the relationship between the perceived legitimacy of influencers and attitude toward the brand.

By using Google Forms to distribute links on various social media platforms, data were collected between January 15, 2021, and February 20, 2021. The population participants were all over 18 and had social media accounts. In the questionnaire, participants were asked to write down three influencers that they followed. They were then asked to answer the other statements in the survey with these three influencers in mind. Participants were included through convenience sampling from the population. A total of 514 people answered the questionnaire. These questions were then subjected to a statistical analysis using PLS-SEM.

The results showed that cognitive, moral and pragmatic legitimacies significantly affect brand trust. Moreover, the moral and pragmatic legitimacies significantly affect the attitude towards the brand. Regarding the mediation effect, results showed that brand trust has a mediating effect between the perceived legitimacy of influencers and attitude towards the brand.

One of the main limitations of this study is that the data were collected by convenience sampling. Therefore, the research results cannot be generalised. Another limitation is that the study measures general perceptions of influencers' legitimacy, so it has not been addressed in terms of a specific product group, follower or influencer self-branding issues.

The managerial contribution of this research centers on the ability to evaluate the influencers and their legitimacy in society; not only by their follower count but also by the legitimacy factors that can be named under the name of primary legitimacy norms. Managers will then be able to use this framework to determine which influencers they want to work with.

When the literature was reviewed, no study was found that examined and measured the perceived legitimacy of influencers in terms of social norms, values and morals. This research aims to add the concept of the perceived legitimacy of influencers to the discussion in the literature, embody the legitimate framework of influencers' activities and provide a more general conceptual basis for persuasiveness in influencer marketing.

This paper examined the relationship between firm innovativeness and consumer trust in the sharing economy. In addition, the authors examine the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy and the moderating effect of social worth.

To examine the hypotheses, the authors collected data from 276 users of a sharing platform (Didi) in China to conduct empirical research. The “lavaan” packages in R and SPSS were used to analyze the data and test the proposed hypotheses.

The results reveal that sharing platforms' innovativeness is positively related to consumer trust, and this relationship is mediated by organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, sharing platforms' social worth moderates the relationship between firm innovativeness and organizational legitimacy as well as the indirect effect of firm innovativeness on consumer trust via organizational legitimacy.

This article proposes strategies that enable sharing platforms to increase consumer trust, which can also better promote the development of the sharing economy.

This paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the social attributes of the sharing economy. By building a more detailed model of consumer trust, this paper adds to the knowledge on the influencing mechanism of consumer trust in the sharing economy.

Marketers are increasingly aware of ethnic subgroups as segments to target with customized offers. This paper aims to investigate the role of ethnic‐related outlet attributes in determining the attractiveness of mainstream and ethnic service outlets to ethnic consumers.

Based on institutional theory and self‐congruity theory, the paper proposes that two sets of outlet attributes, ethnic‐related and performative attributes, influence the attractiveness of an outlet. These effects are mediated by a business's pragmatic legitimacy, its social legitimacy (in terms of perceived sensitivity to ethnic culture), and the congruity between the consumer's self‐image and the business. A model is proposed and hypotheses derived. They are tested on data from an online survey among 483 Chinese Australian consumers about their use of travel agents. The hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling.

The study reveals that ethnic‐related attributes play a specific and significant role in determining outlet attractiveness for Chinese consumers in Australia. Although they have a smaller effect than service and price, ethnic‐related attributes contribute positively to perceived attractiveness. Of the performative attributes, customer service has the largest effect; offering competitive prices has the second largest effect. Outlet accessibility has no significant effect while store atmosphere has an unexpected negative effect. Store atmosphere acts as both a performative and an ethnic‐related attribute. The results confirm the hypothesized mediation effects of pragmatic legitimacy, social legitimacy and congruity.

This study contributes to a better understanding of ethnic consumer behaviour and the role of ethnic retail and service outlets in the market place. It provides new insights by drawing from different theoretical frameworks (institutional theory and self‐congruity theory) and conducting an empirical study that uses validated scales in a unique setting among real consumers reporting about their use of a service provider. The results not only demonstrate the role and potential of ethnic attributes, but also how customer service and store atmosphere play a more intricate role than initially expected.

The purpose of this paper is to review the growing emphasis on quantifiable performance measures such as social return on investment (SROI) in third sector organisations – specifically, social enterprise – through a legitimacy theory lens. It then examines what social enterprises value (i.e. consider important) in terms of performance evaluation, using a case study approach.

Case studies involving interviews, documentary analysis, and observation, of three social enterprises at different life-cycle stages with different funding structures, were constructed to consider “what measures matter” from a practitioner's perspective.

Findings highlight a priority on quality outcomes and impacts in primarily qualitative terms to evaluate performance. Further, there is a noticeable lack of emphasis on financial measures other than basic access to financial resources to continue pursuing social goals.

The practical challenges faced by social enterprises – many of which are small to medium sized – in evaluating performance and by implication organisational legitimacy are contrasted with measures such as SROI which are resource intensive and have inherent methodological limitations. Hence, findings suggest the limited and valuable resources of social enterprises would be better allocated towards documenting the actual outcomes and impacts as a first step, in order to evaluate social and financial performance in terms appropriate to each objective, in order to demonstrate organisational legitimacy.

Findings distinguish between processes which may hold symbolic legitimacy for select stakeholder groups, and processes which hold substantive, cognitive legitimacy for stakeholders more broadly, in the under-researched context of social enterprise.

This paper studies early stages of actor mobilization for institutional change within Swedish esports.

The authors employ interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The authors’ findings explain how actors become motivated to act in critical reflections linked to conflicting legitimacy judgments and emotionally charged personal struggles. Moreover, the findings show how, as actors get activated in collective action, they identify efficacy lines around valid domains and experience emotionally charged collective endeavors. Furthermore, the findings explain how particularities in early experiences project legitimacy aspirations that orient collective action toward validity ends and particular values and ideals shaping actors' grassroots movements.

This study adds to legitimacy and institutional change theory through individual actors' perspectives, providing key insights into how they are motivated, activated, and oriented. This study is the first to investigate grassroots activists' personal stories in esports.

Research on social media frequently analyze social media usage (SMU)'s positive consequences for organizations and individuals; however, recent innovation studies caution that SMU may not always lead to positive new product development (NPD) outcomes. The competing streams of research highlight a fundamental tension that exists in the social media literature exemplified by the question: Is SMU good or bad for NPD? In this manuscript, the authors suggest that a more appropriate question as follows: What are the positive and negative indirect effects of SMU on NPD performance? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the aforementioned points in detail.

A literature review provides the model and hypotheses. Using a sample of 168 Chinese firms, the authors conducted an empirical test following multiple regression analysis.

The results demonstrate that SMU facilitates business analytics (ability) and social legitimacy (opportunity) but impairs entrepreneurial proclivity (motivation). These three constructs in turn mediate the effect of SMU on NPD performance. Moreover, this paper explores how technological turbulence moderates SMU's effects on business analytics, entrepreneurship proclivity and social legitimacy.

The results may be affected by both the context (solely in China) and type (cross-sectional) of the data set. Future research might take a decompositional approach to study SMU's effect on innovation in different NPD stages. Furthermore, with widely varying purposes (e.g., marketing, information searching, partner collaboration, new product launch, etc.), there is certainly a need for more clarity and understanding of how firms can leverage each of these different social media activities for successful NPD.

First, we suggest that managers in China should be explicitly aware of the double-edged sword effect of SMU on NPD performance. Second, this study encourages managers to use social media carefully when technological turbulence becomes intense.

Drawing on the ability–motivation–opportunity framework, this is one of the first studies to simultaneously examines the benefits and costs of SMU for NPD. In addition, this paper bridges the separate literatures on social media, business analytics, entrepreneurial proclivity and social legitimacy and contributes to the NPD research.

The purpose of this study is to explores the extent to which local institutional forces affect female entrepreneurial venture performance. Drawing upon a unified theoretical framework of social cognitive and institutional perspectives, the authors scrutinize the complex interplay among institutional support, entrepreneurial cognitions and entrepreneurial success.

Based on a unique sample of 202 female entrepreneurs in 30 provinces throughout Japan, this paper grounded social cognitive theory and attempted to clear the relation between women’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy and venture performance empirically by statistical analysis.

The findings of structural equation modeling indicate that women’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy is a strong and useful mediator of the effect of informal institutional support on venture performance. Unexpectedly, formal institutional support shows no correlation with entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

This study proposes that perceived social legitimacy may lead to increased entrepreneurial self-efficacy, thereby enhancing venture performance. This finding can clarify the institutional force pathways to foster entrepreneurial confidence.

This study contributes to the field of female entrepreneurship by examining institutional antecedents of women’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Focused on the case of Japanese female entrepreneurs, this study is unique and valuable.

The growing popularity of gig and sharing economy changes not only consumption models but also employment patterns. This study aims to analyze the potential entrepreneurial nature of gig and sharing economy initiatives. As such, the authors compare the entrepreneurial intentions of gig and sharing economy workers to the general population. Further, the authors consider commonalities and differences in terms of the driving forces of both intentions to start-up and participation in gig and sharing economy, treating them as connected phenomena. Finally, the authors look into gig and sharing economy experience as a direct antecedent to entrepreneurial intentions formation.

The empirical settings for this study are derived from the sample of 1,257 individuals who participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Adult Population Survey 2018 in Russia. Methodologically, the authors rely on analysis of variance-test and binary logistic regression analysis to test the study hypotheses.

The results indicate that entrepreneurial intentions of gig and sharing economy workers are significantly higher when compared to the general population. In terms of antecedents to gig and sharing economy participation and startup intentions, similar effects of age, entrepreneurial social capital, prior entrepreneurial exit and intrapreneurial experience were revealed, while perceived self-efficacy was associated only with engagement into digital platforms. Finally, gig and sharing economy experience showed significant and positive effect on entrepreneurial intentions formation.

This study represents a first substantive effort to systematize antecedents to gig and sharing economy participation through an entrepreneurship perspective. Beyond that, this research adds to the contextualization of entrepreneurship literature stream, further defining the mechanism of entrepreneurial intentions formation in empirical settings of an emerging market with a relatively low propensity of population to develop intentions to start-up.

This study aims to investigate whether firms’ involvement in socially provocative business activities or businesses that are inconsistent with Shariah principles affect auditor’s perceived risk associated with the financial reporting information.

This study uses a median regression with measures that are consistent with prior literature. This study comprises of 11,799 firm-year observations obtained from MSCI environmental, sustainable and governance STATS database.

The results provide evidence indicating that auditors relatively charge higher audit fees for Shariah non-compliant firms except for firms that are involved with alcohol and gambling businesses. Firms that are involved in gambling activities report relatively lower audit fees, whereas firms with high involvement in alcohol business activities report non-significant relationship with audit fees.

The findings suggest that on average, ethical contextualisation on perceived acceptable behaviours is relatively consistent across beliefs and the severe lack of it has implications on auditors’ business risk assessment. However, as a social construct, the conception of ethical behaviour is highly dependent on the change in the societal values and therefore this explains the variance in the expected findings for gambling and alcohol business activities.

This study adds to the existing business risk literature, by examining the under-explored association between Shariah non-compliant risk and auditors’ perceived risk, measured by audit fees in a non-Muslim majority setting.