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How is moral legitimacy established in pluralist contexts where multiple moral frameworks co-exist and compete? Situations of moral multiplexity complicate not only whether an organization or practice is legitimate but also which criteria should be used to establish moral legitimacy. We argue that moral legitimacy can be thought of as the property of a dynamic dialogical process in which relations between moral schemes are constantly (re-)negotiated through dynamic exchange with audiences. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s ‘orders of worth’ framework, we propose a process model of how three types of truces may be negotiated: transcendence, compromise, antagonism. While each can create moral legitimacy in pluralistic contexts, legitimacy is not a binary variable but varying in degrees of scope and certainty.

The purpose of this paper is to apply insights from the moral legitimacy theory to understand how climate for inclusion (CFI) is cultivated at the individual and collective levels, thereby highlighting the influence of employee perceptions of inclusion-oriented high-performance work systems (HPWS) on CFI.

A multi-level conceptual framework is introduced to explain how employee perceptions develop about the moral legitimacy of inclusion-oriented HPWS and the subsequent influence on CFI.

CFI is theorized to manifest when employees perceive inclusion-oriented HPWS as morally legitimate according to four unit-level features. Employees with a strong moral identity will be particularly attuned to the moral legitimacy of each of the unit-level HPWS features, thereby strengthening the perceived HPWS and CFI relationship at the individual level. The convergence of individual-level perceptions of CFI to the collective level will be strongest when climate variability is low for majority and minority groups.

Organizations seeking to develop CFI should consider the role of HPWS and the perceived moral legitimacy of such systems. This consideration may involve policy amendments to include a broadened scope of HPWS.

This paper explores how employee perceptions of the moral legitimacy of HPWS can help or hinder CFI, thereby offering a novel framework for future inclusion and human resource management research.

This study extends legitimacy theory by examining individualizing and binding moral motives and perceptions of police.

Data are drawn from an online survey of the public (N = 961). OLS regression is used to predict global perceptions of legitimacy, as well as department legitimacy and acceptance of force in an experimental vignette that manipulates procedural justice.

The binding moral motive is associated with greater global and department legitimacy and acceptance of force. The individualizing moral motive is associated with reduced global legitimacy and acceptance of force, and with department legitimacy when procedural justice is low. Perceptions of legitimacy mediate the effects of the binding moral motive on acceptance of force and of the individualizing moral motive when procedural justice is low.

This study identifies novel antecedents of police legitimacy and acceptance of force (i.e. binding and individualizing moral motives).

This study provides insight into public attitudes regarding use of force.

This study is the first to propose and test a link between binding and individualizing moral motives and perceptions of police.

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.

This paper aims to propose the concept of consumer legitimacy, develops scales to measure this concept and shows its utility and relevance in the international marketing field.

A four-step deductive approach (construct definition, item generation, scale purification and scale validation) is used to develop scales for three dimensions of consumer legitimacy, then a structural model of antecedents and outcomes of the construct provides validity for the developed scales.

Results validate the developed scales with different multinational enterprise contexts across two countries. It is found that perception of social responsibility influences three dimensions of consumer legitimacy, both moral and cognitive legitimacy influence willingness to buy firm products, and moral legitimacy influences attitudes toward the firm.

As a crucial resource, legitimacy can offer firms comparative advantages that lead to competitive advantages. The findings of this research provide a new perspective on how firms may measure, acquire and/or increase this resource.

This paper shifts the discussion of legitimacy to a key firm stakeholder that has been ignored in the literature: consumers. Thus, it implies that both researchers and practitioners should provide stronger consideration to the consumer role in granting legitimacy.

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.

In recent years, scholars, business practitioners and consultants frequently talk about building the networked enterprise. The purpose of this paper is to examine the connections between networked enterprises, organizational legitimacy and organizational performance.

A survey was developed that measured the following aspects of a networked enterprise: employees who network and communicate extensively via internal digital platforms across their organizations; leaders who actively use internal digital platforms to communicate with employees; leaders who actively communicate with stakeholders via external digital platforms; and an innovation culture. The survey measured the following forms of legitimacy judgments: moral; instrumental; and relational. Altogether, 501 executives and managers were surveyed (207 executives, 147 senior managers and 147 managers) in mid-to-large sized (over 500 employees) companies.

The analyses showed strong statistical significance for nearly all relationships. Internal communication on digital platforms, networked employee communication and an innovation culture all contributed to moral, instrumental and relational legitimacy. Leadership communication on external digital platforms (social media) was not a significant contributor to moral or relational legitimacy but was a significant contributor to instrumental legitimacy. Higher organization legitimacy was correlated with higher profit growth.

Leaders and communicators should prioritize a networked enterprise in several ways. They should actively communicate with employees on internal digital platforms. To be absent on internal digital platforms is a significant missed opportunity by leaders to build organizational legitimacy. Further, leaders and communicators should actively promote networked communication among employees as much as possible. Finally, leaders and communicators should communicate, model and reward an innovation culture.

There are no known scholarly studies that accomplish the following: empirically examine a model of networked enterprises comprised of vertical and horizontal communication and an innovation culture; and make connections between leadership communication on digital platforms in networked enterprises with legitimacy judgments. The large sample of contemporary executives and managers bolsters the strength of the findings.

The aim of this chapter is to develop the measurement of corporate legitimacy among Government-linked Companies (GLCs) in Malaysia. Corporate legitimacy is important for determining the survival of the corporation. The term of legitimacy can be classified into three different aspects, namely, political, economic, and social legitimacy. Political legitimacy indicates the right to govern and rule; economic legitimacy reflects on success through product selling, customers’ satisfaction, and providing better services and goods. However, in the corporate sectors, corporate social responsibility is used as a platform not only to gain economic legitimacy, but most importantly to achieve social legitimacy. Social legitimacy focuses on corporation as a societal institution that is more complex by combining the social norms, values, and expectation. With the above argument, this chapter explores how corporate social responsibility (or corporate responsibility) can be used to show societal acceptance reflecting their corporate legitimacy. The corporations are expected to be socially acceptable according to social norms, values, and beliefs. The growth of the corporation has faced a number of challenges in gaining and maintaining their existence. While the corporations are expected to deal with the challenges effectively, the corporations must also be relevant in the eyes of the stakeholders. To establish this, corporations emphasized on gaining and maintaining legitimacy through various mechanisms. The principles of legitimacy are related to the conformity to the norms, values, and expectation of their stakeholders’ engagement through corporate social activities. The study employed a cross-sectional sample survey designed to collect data from a pre-selected list of non-governmental organization (NGOs) obtained from the Registrar of Societies, Malaysia. From a list of about 22,000 societies, 377 were shortlisted covering five categories of societies: community welfare, education, sport, social and recreation, and business and trade union. This study measured three dimensions of corporate legitimacy comprising pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy. Using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), this study found that there is a high level of corporate legitimacy from the perspective of NGOs, which indicated that the NGOs highly view the corporate legitimacy of Malaysian GLCs through their corporate responsibility activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetorical strategies used by organizations in support of propriety judgments concerning their products.

The approach taken entails discourse and rhetorical analysis of texts produced by leading firms in the bottled water industry, and by the industry’s trade association, surrounding issues of sustainability.

The analysis reveals rhetorical strategies invoked by firms to legitimate their economic, environmental and social performance.

This paper’s primary contribution is to research that informs the discursive aspects of legitimacy. As well, this study contributes to our nascent understanding of the microfoundations of sustainability.

Our knowledge of how organizations use different discursive strategies in support of legitimacy is relatively underdeveloped. By examining rhetorical strategies used in support of propriety judgments concerning organizations’ environmental, social and economic legitimacy, this study begins to fill gaps in our understanding.

The authors report a field study examining the perceptions of Kenyan host-country stakeholders toward activities of Chinese businesses in their country, and the consequences of this on the legitimacy that they bestow on pertinent entities.

Interviews and observations across an eight-week period of field research revealed generally negative attitudes toward Chinese businesses, with issues pertinent to moral legitimacy prominent, notably, perceptions of corrupt practices, environmental neglect and profit expatriation.

The authors also find evidence that these negative attitudes spilled over to contaminate Kenyans’ perceptions of their own government, which respondents associated closely with the activities of Chinese entities.

The authors extend understanding of legitimacy theory and the implications of foreign business activity by highlighting that businesses may be mistaken to believe that their international business activities are politically neutral, and while host governments may believe that the economic benefits arising from attracting foreign business activity can buttress their legitimacy, the perceived activities of these businesses, in the absence of supporting institutional frameworks, may render this counterproductive.