Legitimacy as an Aspect to Access to Global Value Chains: Study of a Local Tourism Network in a Developing Country

Abstract

The objective is to propose organizational legitimacy as a condition that supports upgrading strategies for a tourism network in Colombia, in order to guarantee an access to Global Value Chains. We assessed the legitimacy of the network considering four sources: governance, democratic management, corporate citizenship and political agency. We applied a personal questionnaire to 135 firms’ owners, who rated different variables of the legitimacy sources. Discriminant analysis revealed that democratic management was the best discriminant variable and corporate citizenship did not discriminate organizational legitimacy. However, proposed functional upgrading strategies are focused on strengthening democratic management, governance and political agency.