Managing Legitimacy Through Conventionality Rather Than Alignment: Anti-Corruption at Family Versus Non-Family Firms

Abstract

Organizations have to manage their legitimacy by conforming with societal expectations. Existing research usually equates conformity with similarity across organizations, referred to as ‘alignment’. However, recent research suggests that, next to alignment, there is another form of conformity that it is motivated by organizations’ intent to stand out from their peers, labelled ‘conventionality’. We study the choice between alignment versus conventionality approaches to conformity taking the case of business ethics in the context of anti-corruption. Exploring the role of firm ownership, we argue that family firms engage more in conventionality rather than alignment to secure legitimacy compared to non-family firms. Moreover, family firms’ preference of conventionality over alignment does not vanish with increasing firm size, but even intensifies. We test our hypotheses using survey responses of top managers in Germany and Switzerland and contribute to research on strategic conformity, family firms, and institutional theory.