In this study we apply a 'legitimacy lens' to.examine a dominant conceptualisation of participation . Access's story makes an important point about the main limitation of the access-and-legitimacy paradigm: under its influence, the motivation for diversity usually emerges from very immediate and . While the local council could perform spot inspections, most of them reporting about adherence to permit conditions came from internal employees. Brown, J. and Fraser, M. (2006), “Approaches and perspectives in social and environmental accounting: an overview of the conceptual landscape”, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. Ecosystem services have become a dominant paradigm for understanding how people derive well-being from ecosystems. Furthermore, demand was projected to grow, not only leading to production bottlenecks at the current site, but also increasing emissions costs, and consequently, lowering profit margins. If the visibility of an issue is low, then the company may again postpone its action to remedy the situation to suit its own convenience and minimise costs. The company was able to avoid immediate action because no “direct stakeholder” was involved (Agle et al., 1999). The company was image conscious in these interactions, given the environmentally sensitive nature of its operations. And by that I mean if you’re in a [description of environmentally sensitive operating site] and you have a community that trusts you as an organisation - trusts you to do the right thing if there are problems and not walk all over them, and sometimes in some of our businesses we require our neighbours to sign off on consents, change of hours – things like that and that is what I mean by they enable sometimes our license to operate and make changes. 2, pp. A repeated theme in the conversation with the manager was the “self-consciousness” that some employees felt about the external image of the company, particularly in relation to the way external stakeholders viewed the firm. Legitimacy theory explained the relationship between corporate social disclosure and communities as company are bound by the social contract . 1091-1112. Georgia Southern University, Georgia, GA, USA. 102 No. In this case, acting in unison with these more salient stakeholders, less salient stakeholders may be able to increase pressure on the company to respond with immediate direct action. The second issue concerned a neighbour’s farmland when a bund, or man-made earth barrier, eroded during a period of heavy rainfall. Brown, N. and Deegan, C. (1998), “The public disclosure of environmental performance information – a dual test of media agenda setting theory and legitimacy theory”, Accounting and Business Research, Vol. 49-75. Risk mitigation should be number one and costs shouldn’t come into it” (Environmental Advisor 1). Clarkson, M. (1995), “A stakeholder framework for analyzing and evaluating corporate social performance”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. Regional Directors were held responsible on a range of different indicators including financial, production, environmental and health and safety goals. 372-405. Draws on theory of entanglement to extend theoretical treatment of uneven access. The authors see legitimacy anywhere as always partial, rather . Thus, reporting may be used as a symbolic gesture (Suchman, 1995) to portray legitimacy. Belal and Owen, 2015). Case vignettes highlight how pragmatic legitimacy via dispositional legitimacy can be managed with direct action in the short-term to influence a limited range of salient stakeholders. (2000), “Earning a social license to operate: social acceptability and resource development in Latin America”, CIM Bulletin, Vol. Durand, R. and Vergne, J.P. (2015), “Asset divestment as a response to media attacks in stigmatized industries”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. Prakash, A. New Zealand subsidiary’s Annual Reviews (2002–2009 – the first of these was titled A second approach to Triple Bottom Line Reporting). Direct action has a limited place in this setting, where there are no “direct” stakeholders because the issue is so wide and encompassing. Sebastian Tomus/Shutterstock. 47 No. “Debated” legitimacy reflects a situation where different stakeholders may have divergent opinions and challenge the values and activities of an organisation (Deephouse et al., 2017). Beta operated near a large residential and commercial precinct near a major city. Pragmatic legitimacy deals with self-interested evaluations of an organisation by external stakeholders (Suchman, 1995, p. 571). Deephouse, D.L. The interview length ranged from 30 to 50 minutes. In cases where disparity arises, the legitimacy of . Kent, P. and Zunker, T. (2013), “Attaining legitimacy by employee information in annual reports”, Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal, Vol. As the company does not have a site in this community, it cannot fortify itself with a previous track-record of dispositional legitimacy with direct stakeholders. 59, pp. Consequently, the company had to act in an “episodic” effort to repair its legitimacy by demonstrating consequential moral legitimacy in “doing the right thing” and in showing that the company pragmatically acted in the “interest” of the neighbour (Suchman, 1995, p. 584). Learning and effectiveness paradigm. Instead, it must rely on an overarching sense of legitimacy in New Zealand, enabled through the use of a suite of communication tools. 445-468. An in-depth case study (Stake, 1995; Lee and Saunders, 2017) was conducted at the focal case company and involved considerable interaction with employees, senior managers and executives and stakeholders from numerous site locations over nine months. 78-94. An outline of the four operating sites, and each of three short-term issues and a long-term issue which emerged during the course of the case investigation and feature in the subsequent analysis are presented below. The outcome of the long-term decision on moving to a new site would change the way the company operated in New Zealand. Second, while there has been consideration of the role of external reporting in managing legitimacy (see, e.g. Ultimately, the present study provides a number of contributions to the literature. Tom Tyler, one of the key figures in the field of procedural fairness, provides a concise overview for members of the court community in his article "Procedural Justice and the Courts."In a recent lecture, Professor Tyler further explores and highlights the . 2, pp. The survey was tested initially with three agencies of different sizes. July 2006. 8, pp. Salesperson Race and Gender and the Access and Legitimacy Paradigm: Does Difference Make a Difference? Having previously demonstrated “good character” with the neighbours slowed escalatory action by giving the company a chance to rectify the problem (see also, Puncheva, 2008; Welcomer, 2002). This also aligns with Suchman’s (1995, pp. Thus, the response to the long-term issue is more symbolic and subtle than substantive and overt. Perhaps the most widely accepted view of how the Supreme Court acquires and maintains its legitimacy is positivity theory, which claims that the legitimizing symbols of judicial authority protect the Court's legitimacy from dissatisfaction with its rulings. This was because improving relationships at a micro level may be easier, and within the sphere of control of company personnel, rather than attempting to achieve broader and more complex sociopolitical legitimacy (Boutilier and Thomson, 2011). Buhr, N., Gray, R. and Milne, M.J. (2014), “Histories, rationales, voluntary standards and future prospects for sustainability reporting”, in Unerman, J., O’Dwyer, B. and Bebbington, J. although the study of the legitimacy of the organization has been widespread, it is not deep enough. Multiple quotations from a number of individuals, and other evidence, were gathered under each theme (Miles and Huberman, 1994). It uses institutional theory as a lens to understand the factors that legitimize the adoption of renewable energy activities in an oil and gas company. A review of the relevant literature is presented in the next section. Data collection was holistic with the primary researcher embedded in the context of the company’s operations with key staff. Hahn, R. and Kühnen, M. (2013), “Determinants of sustainability reporting: a review of results, trends, theory, and opportunities in an expanding field of research”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 4 I will also talk a lot about 'value convergence': by this I will in general mean convergence sufficient to establish a liberal concept of legitimacy. Moral right to rule - Locke and consent - social contrast theory - we consent to be governed. 1 No. 365-370. The access and legitimacy paradigm focus on the. and Meyer, R.E. Supply options project: Transport (Information Sheet 5). It discusses how episodic and strategic attempts to manage legitimacy relate to the continual and institutional dimensions of legitimacy. Suddaby, R., Bitektine, A. and Haack, P. (2017), “Legitimacy”, Academy of Management Annals, Vol. (2012), “Configuring management control systems: theorizing the integration of strategy and sustainability”, Management Accounting Research, Vol. The organisation (and the entire industry) is subject to extensive scrutiny, given high greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain and the possibility of environmental and aesthetic “harm” in particular localities. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Most definitions of organizational legitimacy refer to the appropriateness or alignment of a subject in the context of a social system. 336 D.P. 1287-1297. Institutional legitimacy emphasises the power of external, cultural and contextual factors in constructing organisations and the standards by which they are judged. The subsidiary is subject to regulatory review under New Zealand’s Resource Management Act (1991) under which stakeholders have a significant voice in debating (and opposing) the externalities of the company’s operations. This paper will also provide insights into the origins of . The following section, Theorizing Access, compares access to prop- erty. 103-117. Even to the present day, the site was considered a “hotspot”. 24 No. Sustainability and legitimacy theory: The case of sustainable social and environmental practices of small and medium-sized enterprises Richard M. Crossley1 . Arjaliès and Mundy, 2013). Media attention may exacerbate the reputation damage and activate “indirect” stakeholders (Deephouse, 2000, p. 1098; Driscoll and Crombie, 2001). Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm Primary Limitation. Bebbington, J. and Thomson, I. Our study finds the legitimacy of customary systems - and thus their power in shaping access - has eroded unevenly for some ecosystem services, and some people within the community (e.g. If not, the company can potentially delay action or reporting, unless the affected stakeholders have a high level of interconnectedness with other, more salient stakeholders. 49-77. 23 No. 507-525. • Draws on theory of entanglement to extend theoretical treatment of uneven access. One way corporations act to remain legitimate to these Open Access Open Access. We aim to contribute to ecosystem services' theoretical treatment of access . (2011), “Toward a theory of social judgements: the case of legitimacy, reputation, and status”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. Expert Answer 100% (1 rating) Previous question Next question . (2011), “Modelling and measuring the social license to operate: fruits of a dialogue between theory and practice”, working paper, available at: www.researchgate.net/profile/Emmanuel_Raufflet/publication/276333081_De_l’acceptabilite_sociale_au_developpement_local_resilient/links/56000d6b08aeba1d9f8493ff.pdf (accessed 9 November 2014). macy have greater access to resources and improved their results. Gond, J.P., Grubnic, S., Herzig, C. and Moon, J. and communications in the triple-bottom-line report are: […] about building up a track record of positive things knowing that there are also a lot of negatives out there and people have only got to do a web search. As Suchman (1995, p. 588) notes, “organizations seeking to gain pragmatic legitimacy rarely can rely on purely dispositional appeals, because assumptions of good character generally require an established record of consistent performance”. Brown and Deegan, 1998; Cho et al., 2015; Tilling and Tilt, 2010; Deegan, 2014). 385-394. (2015) who conducted a large survey of Australian companies’ reporting practices and showed that 88 per cent of companies expected external reporting to improve or manage their reputations. 2, pp. 1, pp. "Legitimacy is a generalised perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions" (Suchman, 1995, p. 574).Due to its flexibility, the definition itself can be tweaked to "fit" the social and or environmental spectrum, for example, "the generalised perception or . They want society to see them as "legitimate". (2001), “Stakeholder legitimacy management and the qualified good neighbor: the case of Nova Nada and JDI”, Business & Society, Vol. Neville and Menguc (2006) more specifically refer to the notion of stakeholder networks. 31 No. 406-436. This book documents the bases for a new view of legitimacy in general and in various parts of Asia, including China, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Diversity in the workplace has been a subject of inquiry for many theorists, and, in a . 4, pp. Of particular importance, as part of the stakeholder system, is the ability to understand, prioritise and connect relationships and interdependencies (Neville et al., 2011; Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Harrison and St John, 1994). This in turn requires the adoption of a CSR strategy . This definition is extended by Deephouse and Suchman (2008) by employing an in-depth, yet short summary of Suchman’s (1995) paper, quoting that “[l]egitimacy is not a commodity to be possessed or exchanged but a condition reflecting cultural alignment, normative support, or consonance with relevant rules or laws” (Suchman, 1995 cited in Deephouse and Suchman, 2008, p. 51). Through this process, several illustrative events emerged from the data highlighting “vivid” and “clear” examples (Gibson and Brown, 2009) of management decisions at four operating sites: Alpha, Beta, Charlie and Delta. Brand legitimacy: a concept which, just like brand integrity, credibility and authenticity, is gaining importance, especially in connection with political and business actions and (lack of) leadership, such as in connection with place branding initiatives. More specifically, further research illustrating the intricate aspects of how legitimacy is built, managed and repaired with salient stakeholders to navigate overarching organisational legitimacy is warranted. Suchman (1995) condenses the diverse literature on organisational legitimacy into strategic approaches and institutional approaches[1]. (2010), “The edge of legitimacy: voluntary social and environmental reporting in Rothmans’ 1956 – 1999 annual reports”, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Vol. Definition - focuses on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment of minorities, and strict compliance with the equal opportunity laws - most commonly used . 1, pp. 237-248. You can join in the discussion by joining the community or logging in here.You can also find out more about Emerald Engage. Higgins et al., 2015; Cho et al., 2015). 1) Thomas and Ely's three paradigms demonstrate the various types of diversity management‚ the ways they work and how well they can affect a company's management performance. Subsequently, interview transcripts were re-read. Footnote 45 This second view interprets the disturbances above all as a consequence of the legitimacy deficit of executive multilateralism and the poor accountability of its political elites. 865-868). Only on one occasion in the 2005 report, was there a disclosure of an environmental infringement; however, there were no specific details of the nature of the incident or remedial action around the problem. As noted earlier, the case company was a very visible target in the communities it operated in. Academy of Management Review, 40: 49-75.Link, Google . Only where an environmental incident damages legitimacy to a larger number of stakeholders is external reporting also used to buttress community support. Our findings suggest that attention to entanglement and legitimacy can help ecosystem services approaches capture the dynamic and relational aspects of power that shape how people navigate access to resources in a changing world. 15 No. This distinction between episodic and continual, and actions and essences, allows for a more nuanced analysis of the way that certain actions and/or external reporting behaviours eventuate in our case study analysis. and Tilt, C.A. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. Here, strategic reporting of the incident can be used as a tool to bolster the dispositional legitimacy of the company with its “close stakeholders” and present a glossier image of itself to a wider array of stakeholders. 492-517. It was noted that a competitor had recently upgraded one of its own operating sites and had a superior array of capabilities. We concentrate on Tyler's procedural justice model. Tilt, Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. We also consider the idea that police legitimacy is . Eli Jones Eli Jones (Ph.D., Texas A&M University) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Houston. Yet substantive gestures (Suchman, 1995) are also important to legitimacy. Two significant issues arose at Alpha. February 2007. and Cooper, S. (2011), “The absence of corporate social responsibility reporting in Bangladesh”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. This paradigm is the one that we usually use when presenting the business case for diversity in the workplace. Diversity in this paradigm is used to connect with clients: it is a resource. (2002), “Securing organizational legitimacy: an experimental decision case examining the impact of environmental disclosures”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. A semi-structured interview approach was chosen because it allowed the researcher flexibility and scope to explore new and emerging themes during the course of data collection (Barbour, 2008; Silverman, 2005). women), and that different marine provisioning services are shaped by specific access mechanisms, which vary along . Citizen and stakeholder participation is held to bolster the democratic legitimacy of. Reviews. (1999), “Stakeholder influence strategies”, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. In terms of the future direction of the applicability of the legitimacy theory, there appears to be a number of subject areas or legitimacy . Garcia, S., Cintra, Y., Torres, R. and Lima, F. (2016), “Corporate sustainability management: a proposed multi-criteria model to support balanced decision-making”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. This paper outlines how episodic encounters to manage strategic legitimacy with salient stakeholders in the short-term are theoretically distinct, but nonetheless linked to continual efforts to maintain institutional legitimacy. No external reporting, Repair legitimacy with multiple stakeholders to mitigate widespread threat to institutional legitimacy, High interconnectedness of stakeholders. Furthermore, as a regulatory authority, local councils had fewer network interdependencies which meant that they were unlikely to divulge information to the media and escalate the situation unless a severe and wide-scale incident had occurred. August 2006. Local perceptions of oil and gas projects in Russia’s Komi Republic and Sakhalin Island, Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn, A stakeholder framework for analyzing and evaluating corporate social performance, https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2013-1282, http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode, www.researchgate.net/profile/Emmanuel_Raufflet/publication/276333081_De_l’acceptabilite_sociale_au_developpement_local_resilient/links/56000d6b08aeba1d9f8493ff.pdf, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2014.10.003, Acting Technical Manager – Operating site, Harness dispositional legitimacy to avoid threat to institutional legitimacy, The local council does not rely on the network to increase salience, Avoidance behaviour and delay till a less costly fix is possible. To do so, all forms of pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimation are targeted through a suite of communication processes. Talk of political legitimacy crises in world politics is nothing new, but over recent years it has become pervasive. This mentality reflected the company’s propensity to “[r]eprioritise projects based on risks. The diversity of stakeholder demands in this situation showcased not only the strategic value of stakeholder engagement (Matos and Silvestre, 2013) with direct action, but also of reporting in the company’s external report: […] we have had a crisis at [Beta Site] where a lot of [material] went all over [the community near Beta] and that was reflected in our annual report and we talked about what we did about it just in terms of a crisis (External Relations Manager)[8]. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the funding received from an AFAANZ Emerging Scholar’s Research Grant which supported all data collection activities and subsequent analysis. Maintaining pragmatic legitimacy by “stockpiling trust” and highlighting its “good character” as an essence of the organisation had helped to establish legitimacy on a continual basis (Suchman, 1995). Theoretical diversity and more practice-engaged work is called for (Parker, 2014; Unerman and Chapman, 2014). While interview questions were not directly targeted at understanding these sites of operation, they emerged as key focal points to explain the interrelationships between the company and key stakeholders surrounding the sites. The authors thank the invaluable feedback of the anonymous reviewers for suggestions which led to the current version. Thus, by harnessing the claims of the salient stakeholders, the media was able to mobilise greater pressure on the company. This paper is a thought-piece to encourage expanding the framework for self-reflection in library and information science (LIS). Silverman, D. (2005), Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, 2nd ed., Sage Publications, London. 2, pp. The negative media attention and public anger forced actions to, in the words of the facility manager (Site Manager 2), “save our image”. Legitimacy. Ultimately, the framework introduced in this paper sets a foundation for future research to more coherently understand company behaviours, both direct and substantive, as well as symbolic communication strategies, including external reporting, and the relationships between the two. The symbolic adoption of external reporting and concerns over its lack of accountability are well established (e.g. Unlike the access and legitimacy paradigm, the learning and effectiveness paradigm focuses on: “Accepted” organisations reflect the “taken-for-granted” nature that Suchman (1995) describes and these organisations are not subjected to scrutiny. Grbich, C. (2006), Qualitative Data Analysis: An Introduction, Sage Publications, London. Relationships with these “salient” groups may change, along with company response behaviour, according to which stage of legitimacy an organisation resides. Stakeholders may also form networks to consolidate their ability to create a desired outcome in an organisation or its behaviour (Frooman, 1999; Bitektine and Haack, 2015). (2000), Greening the Firm: The Politics of Corporate Environmentalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2062-2087. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2013-1282, Copyright © 2019, Sanjaya C. Kuruppu, Markus J. Milne and Carol A. A considerable amount of money, time and other resources had been expended not only into developing the proposal for the global Headquarters, but also in preparing the New Zealand community where the new site may be based[5]. The project will bring big wins to the district. The three institutional dimensions used in this study are regulative, normative and cognitive, which aimed to measure legitimacy in an oil . 283-316. Frooman, J. As Guthrie and Abeysekera (2006, p. 115; see also Belal and Cooper, 2011) note, “[…] what organizations choose to include in (and omit from) their annual reports is a conscious decision that communicates a significant message to stakeholders”. 39 No. A reasonable amount of autonomy was allowed for the local (New Zealand) Board of Directors to govern operations as necessary in line with the parent company’s philosophy of “International benchmarks.
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