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The purpose of this study is to identify the norms that underlie and condition the decisions made by preparers of financial reports.

This interview-based study illustrates how financial report preparers engage in behaviors linked to the perception of recognition and measurement of internally generated intangible assets by important stakeholders. All of the companies included in the study adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards when creating their consolidated financial statements. The participants selected for the study are involved in accounting decisions related to research and development in accordance with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38.

The authors identify the normative assumptions underlying the recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles, which are based on concerns of consistency, credibility and reasonableness. The authors find that the normative basis for legitimacy in financial accounting is primarily related to cognitive legitimacy and is not of a moral or pragmatic nature.

The study reveals that recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles in financial accounting relate to legitimacy. The authors identify specific norms that form the basis of this legitimacy, namely, consistency, credibility and reasonableness. These identified norms serve as constraints, mitigating the risk of judgment misuse within the IAS 38 framework for earnings management.

This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements.

Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP.

The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor.

The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP.

The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment.

Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

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.

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.

For corporate communications, it is crucial to know how news media outlets report and frame the sociopolitical activities of multinational corporations (MNCs), including their corporate diplomacy, that affect perceptions of their legitimacy. Therefore, this study aims to identify how local news media frame corporate diplomacy in a host country and, in turn, benefit the media legitimacy of MNCs.

To identify media frames in the host country, a quantitative content analysis involving factor and cluster analyses of 385 articles published in newspapers in the United Arab Emirates from 2014 to 2019 addressing the corporate diplomacy of large European MNCs operating in the country was conducted.

This study identified three media frames, two of which establish moral and pragmatic media legitimacy. Results suggest that media legitimacy grows when news media emphasise institutional relationships between MNCs and local, established organisations and corporate diplomacy's benefits for society.

Findings provide insights into how corporate communications can contribute to legitimacy building by emphasising corporations' relationships with institutional actors in host countries and the benefits of corporate activities for local communities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first in corporate communications to empirically investigate news media's role in corporate diplomacy and how media frames contribute to the media legitimacy of MNCs at the moral, pragmatic, regulative and cognitive levels.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the important actor-specific, micro-level legitimacy dimensions in dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs).

Using an embedded case study approach and rich longitudinal data collected over 16 years within a French EE, the study analyzes the legitimacy gaining process of two actors coming from opposite founding conditions.

Three dimensions of legitimacy (3L) are necessary to be accepted as functional actors within EEs: institutional legitimacy (IL) refers to the EE's acceptance of an actor as an institution active in the field of entrepreneurship; cultural legitimacy (CL) means that the actor is recognized as possessing and promoting values considered appropriate by the entrepreneurial community; relational legitimacy (RL) relates to the willingness of the entrepreneurial community to interact with the actor. These are complementary dimensions that members of EEs need to possess to acquire full legitimacy. Different paths are possible to achieve this full legitimacy.

Replicating the study with a comparative approach including more actors could represent an interesting avenue for research.

This research provides insights into the underlying dimensions of legitimacy in EEs, how various actors gain legitimacy in such contexts and how this influences the dynamics of EEs.

The results provide novel insights into the issue of legitimacy in EEs and legitimacy theory in general.

Municipalities seek new opportunities for co-producing services in rural areas. One potential partner is community-based social enterprises (CBSEs). However, whilst service co-production through CBSEs obscures the traditional roles of actors, it may lead to a legitimation crisis in local service provision. In this paper, the ways CBSEs are legitimised as service providers in rural areas are addressed from the CBSE and municipality perspectives.

Empirical data combine interviews with CBSE representatives and open-ended national survey responses from municipality decision-makers. The data analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis to examine legitimation arguments.

Results show that unestablished legitimacy and un-institutionalised support structures for co-production models build mistrust between CBSEs and municipalities, which prevents the parties from seeing the benefits of cooperation in service production.

The research focusses on the legitimation of CBSEs in service co-production in rural areas. As legitimation seems to be a context-specific process, future research is needed regarding other contexts.

Municipalities interested in the co-production of services might benefit from establishing a collaborative and responsive (rural) service policy forum that would institutionalise new models of co-production and enable better design and governance of service provision.

Results will give new theoretical and practical insights into the importance of legitimacy in the development of service co-production relationships.

This paper seeks to investigate to what extent (and why) CSR reporting in developing countries reflect instrumental and/or “political CSR” motivations and the types of organisational legitimacy sought in these circumstances.

We adopt a theoretical framework based on neo-institutional theory, “political CSR” framework and types of organisational legitimacy. This interpretive research is set in the Egyptian context post-2011 revolution. We first carry out a content analysis of web disclosures for 40 banks in 2013 and 2016 to ascertain the nature of CSR activities and any changes over time. Second, we draw on 21 interviews to tease out the implications of the change in societal expectations due to the revolution and to deepen our understanding of the organisational motivations underlying CSR reporting.

Following the 2011 revolution, the banks’ CSR reporting practices have gradually shifted from a largely instrumental “business-case” perspective towards a more substantive recognition of a wider set of societal challenges consistent with a political CSR perspective. Overall, the maintaining/gaining of legitimacy is gradually bound to the communication of accounts about the multi-faceted socially valued consequences or structures performed by banks. Our interview data shows that participants reflected on the legitimation challenges brought by the revolution and the limits of transactional strategies involving traditional constituents, with a preference for pursuing consequential and structural forms of moral legitimacy.

This study demonstrates a constructive shift by businesses towards engaging with the new social rules in response to sociopolitical changes and the need to achieve moral legitimacy. Hence, policymakers and stakeholders could consider engaging with different economic sectors to foster more transparent, accountable, and impactful CSR practices.

We highlight the implications of Scherer and Palazzo’s political CSR approach for accountability and CSR reporting. CSR reporting in some developing countries has typically been seen as peripheral or a symbolic exercise primarily concerned with placating stakeholders and/or promoting shareholders’ interests. We suggest that researchers need to be instead attuned to the possibility of a blend of instrumental and normative motivations.

This paper aims to explore controls within an inter-organisational relationship involving outsourced management accounting services from the contractor’s perspective.

Qualitative data from within the relationship are analysed in a legitimacy-theory framework, illustrating how controls within the relationship are intended to build the contractor’s legitimacy and what kinds of implications the controls have in relation to conflicts between interests inherent in the relationship.

The legitimacy perspective clarifies that while controls are aimed at ensuring efficiency for the client, they may also provide symbolic displays of the appropriateness of the contractor’s actions both at an inter-organisational level for the client and at an individual level for the contractor’s employees. While the contractor intends to build legitimacy with the client by demonstrating utility in the form of efficiency, the process also gives the client influence and allows the disposition in terms of shared values to be demonstrated. However, this process has some negative consequences for the contractor’s employees as it is insufficient for serving the boundary-spanning employees’ interests connected with the nature of their work. Hence, the same controls need to yield benefits and fair outcomes for employees. The controls simultaneously foster interconnections that contribute to permanence and formalise the outsourcing of complex services, thereby rendering such processes comprehensible and transferable to other settings, which can be seen to serve the contractor’s continuity interests.

The paper contributes to academic research by illustrating how controls within inter-organisational relationships not only steer boundary-spanners’ work to conform to a client’s needs but may also help to build legitimacy via symbolic properties in the presence of conflicting interests at both an inter-organisational and individual level. It specifically highlights the important role of boundary-spanners lower in the organisational structure, who both affect and are influenced by the intentions to build legitimacy with the client.

In recent years, several studies on self-legitimacy of police officers were conducted; however, few have tested the unstable nature of legitimacy in different time periods. This paper aims to focus on the self-legitimacy of police officers and its impact on pro-organizational behavior in 2013 and 2016.

The study took place in eight regional police directorates in Slovenia. The number of participants amounted to 529 police officers in 2013 and 478 police officers in 2016 that have completed a paper and pencil survey that was pretested using a convenience sample of police officers studying as part-time undergraduate students.

Overall findings revealed organizational commitment as the strongest predictor of self-legitimacy of police officers in Slovenia. The invariance of the “core variables” and their influence on the self-legitimacy of police officers in different time periods was confirmed. Their perception of individual legitimacy, organizational commitment, education and years of service influenced pro-organizational behaviors of police officers.

Limitations of the study can be seen in the sincerity of participating police officers and the nature of self-legitimacy, which operates differently in different societies.

The results could be used for the improvement of policing in a young democratic country.

Legitimacy, procedural justice and other components of policing in a democratic society need to be tested globally, especially in young democracies. This study is an example of an ongoing, follow-up endeavor of researchers and the national police to reflect upon the development of policing.

The paper has confirmed the invariance of relations with colleagues, supervisors' procedural justice and audience legitimacy on the self-legitimacy in different time periods and societies.