Legitimacy Judgments Research Articles

Email fraud: The search for psychological predictors of susceptibility.

Decisions that we make about email legitimacy can result in a pernicious threat to security of both individuals and organisations. Yet user response to phishing emails is far from uniform; some respond while others do not. What is the source of this diversity in decision-making? From a psychological perspective, we consider cognitive and situational influences that might explain why certain users are more susceptible than others. Alongside an email judgment task employed as a proxy for fraud susceptibility, 224 participants completed a range of cognitive tasks. In addition, we manipulated time pressure for email legitimacy judgments. We identify cognitive reflection and sensation seeking as significant, albeit modest, predictors of susceptibility. Further to this, participants asked to make quicker responses made more judgment errors. We conclude there are cognitive signatures that partially contribute to email fraud susceptibility, with implications for efforts to limit online security breaches and train secure behaviors.

Ups and Downs: The Role of Legitimacy Judgment Cues in Practice Implementation

We explore the way validity and propriety cues contribute to legitimacy judgments about a practice and explain whether the subunit of a large firm increases or decreases the implementation of this practice. Empirically, we examine the extent to which 65 subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise implemented three corporate social responsibility practices. Adopting a set-theoretic approach, we find that both validity and propriety cues are extremely relevant to the understanding of subunits’ implementation of practices over time. The endorsement of a practice in a subunit’s environment plays a particularly crucial role in the extent to which it is implemented, relative to authorization by the parent firm. Furthermore, subunits strongly rely on the active evaluation of the practice’s propriety, such that the consonance between the two propriety dimensions (strategic importance and value compatibility) is central to implementation increase, while dissonance between them can favor implementation decrease. By advancing our understanding of legitimacy judgment formation and practice implementation patterns, our study enriches explanations of organizational conformity and decoupling, and contributes to our understanding of how firms respond to multiple institutional demands.

An Inductive Approach to Examining Racial Majority Versus Minority Expectations and Appraisals of Police Legitimacy in a Small-Town Context

In the wake of significant media coverage of officer involved shootings and civil unrest to protest police behaviors toward Black suspects, policing is confronting a time where public perceptions of police are central to effective policing, especially views by racial minorities. Efforts to understand these views have largely been conducted within urban contexts. Moreover, many studies have relied on quantitative survey data to examine racial differences in views about police; thus, scant research has used qualitative approaches to understand racial differences. Based on qualitative in-person surveys administered to 238 residents in a small Midwestern town, we aim to understand residents’ expectations and assessments of police legitimacy. Contrary to research conducted in urban areas, we do not find a racial gap in views about police. Other than a stronger preference among White residents on the role of police as crime fighters, differences are subtle. These small-town residents appear to be like-minded in their assessments and view police positively. However, nontrivial, albeit nonsignificant, differences by race include minority residents emphasizing treatment by police in making legitimacy judgments, likely explained by the group position thesis and accumulated experiences, while it seems White residents based their responses on global views about the ideal police officer.

Modulation of the leniency bias in the discursive dilemma.

We experimentally approach the discursive dilemma to gain insight into people's procedural appropriateness judgments. We relied on a vignette in which three people had formed opinions about two skills (premises) of a candidate to decide whether to hire her/him (conclusion). The dilemma arises when different outcomes (hire vs. not hire) are achieved depending on whether the majority opinion is independently considered for each premise or for the global conclusion of each judge. Participants were asked to choose the procedure they thought to be more appropriate to reach a decision. In Experiment 1, we found a leniency effect (a bias to prefer the aggregation procedure that led to hiring the candidate), which was reduced by introducing the participant as a juror with an exogenously provided negative opinion about the candidate's skills. In Experiment 2, we replicated the opinion effect, even when subjects did not participate as jury members. In Experiment 3, we found that the leniency bias was only reduced when participants' negative opinion was aligned with a majority of negative premises, but not with a majority of negative conclusions. We discuss present findings in terms of the identification of empirical regularities that may affect people's procedural legitimacy judgments.

Exploring the affective underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities: How managers' emotion regulation behaviors mobilize resources for their firms

Research SummaryOur inductive field study identifies specific emotion regulation (ER) actions as affective underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities. ER refers to the management and modification of one's own and other people's emotions for a specific purpose. Our study shows how differences in managers' attention to ER influence the extent to which they can mobilize resources to pursue market opportunities. We show how their ER of the self helps them mobilize human capital resources by creating psychic benefits, whereas their ER of others helps mobilize social capital by facilitating legitimacy judgments. Our emerging theory explains how the capacity for ER constitutes an important foundation of dynamic managerial capabilities and how it is linked with other key conceptual underpinnings of the construct, namely managerial human and social capital. Managerial SummaryStrategic change processes can be full of ups and downs and have been likened to an emotional roller coaster. In this context, senior managers do not only to have to cope with their own emotions to deal with challenging situations; they also have to pay attention to the emotions of other stakeholders such as employees and investors to maintain or gain these stakeholders' support. Our field study identifies and explains the systematic behaviors that senior managers can use in strategic change contexts to regulate their own emotions as well as those of other stakeholders in order to productively address and overcome difficult business conditions.

Users’ legitimacy perceptions about standard-setting processes

Standard-setting institutions require legitimacy to survive. Prior research infers their legitimacy mainly from the characteristics of standard-setting processes rather than from the legitimacy judgments of important constituencies. Using a survey of financial analysts, we quantitatively assess users’ perceptions about the characteristics of standard-setting processes, the relationships between these characteristics and legitimacy perceptions, and users’ legitimacy perceptions. Our first contribution is to use a sample of sophisticated financial statement users to empirically examine the theoretical proposition that users’ legitimacy perceptions could be a function of the perceived characteristics of standard-setting processes. We find that users’ perceptions about the characteristics of standard-setting processes affect the legitimacy they attribute to these processes. A combination of pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacies are at play in such legitimacy assessments. Our second contribution is to point out the importance of separately investigating various types of legitimacy, as users’ perceptions about them vary. Lastly, our third contribution is to highlight that the distinction between users’ perceptions of the characteristics of standard-setting processes and their legitimacy perceptions is not always clear-cut and that there are multiple interrelations among these concepts.

Legitimate or illegitimate? Insights into validity cues, core values, and legitimacy judgments

The literature on legitimacy has established that to form legitimacy judgments, individual evaluators process two perceptual inputs. On the one hand, they interpret the behavior of the organization under scrutiny and benchmark it to their personal sets of norms, values, and beliefs. On the other, they interpret the judgments of legitimacy awarding institutions though validity cues that these institutions express. Evaluators use these cues to form a legitimacy judgment about an entity. In this paper, we seek to add to the current knowledge of the legitimacy formation process by answering two questions: (1) what are the relative weights of validity cues in the legitimacy assessments of individual evaluators and (2) what is the moderating influence of independence and pro-environmental values on the effects of the validity cues on the legitimacy judgments. We test our hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling on 4944 legitimacy assessments nested in 206 individuals. We find that validity cues indicating public support, economic impact, regulations, and longevity have significant effects on legitimacy assessments of individual evaluators. Second, we observe that evaluators make simultaneous use of different validity cues in their judgment that are linked to different sources of validity, and that appeal to different types of legitimacy. Lastly, we find that individual differences in core values and characteristics of evaluators moderate the effect that the validity cues have on the legitimacy judgment.

Legitimacy Judgments about Corporate Tax Avoidance: A Deliberation Experiment

Previous research has suggested that business firms need to engage in active dialogues with stakeholders to maintain their legitimacy. We investigate this “legitimation-as-deliberation” thesis in t...

Legitimacy Judgment Formation as Deliberation: Evidence from Experiments on Corporate Tax Avoidance

Legitimacy Judgment Formation as Deliberation: Evidence from Experiments on Corporate Tax Avoidance

The interplay between HQ legitimation and subsidiary legitimacy judgments in HQ relocation: A social psychological approach

This paper marks a departure from the focus on external stakeholders in much research on legitimacy and multinational corporations, adopting a social psychological approach to study how MNCs build internal legitimacy for controversial decisions with their subsidiaries. We explore this through a longitudinal, real-time qualitative case study of a regional office relocation, since office relocations represent rare yet significant strategic decisions. We analyze the interplay between the legitimation strategies of senior managers and subsidiary legitimacy judgments, based in instrumental, relational, and moral considerations, and how the relationship between the two develops over time. From this analysis, we derive inductively a process model that reveals the dynamics of building internal legitimacy with subsidiaries, and how an MNC moves on even in the absence of full legitimacy, when dealing with controversial MNC decisions. The model highlights two important dynamics. The first is a dynamic between legitimation strategies and legitimacy judgments and how this is influenced by local subsidiary contexts. The second is a temporal dynamic in how both the legitimation strategies and legitimacy judgments evolve over time. Our model contributes to research on legitimacy in MNCs, what we know about tensions that characterize MNC–subunit relationships, and research on headquarters relocation.

Trump Trumps Bush

In the United States, the legitimacy of presidents who do not obtain a majority of the popular vote is often questioned. Debates on electoral legitimacy tend to revolve around the relative importance of the Electoral College and the popular vote. We develop a theory of electoral legitimacy judgments when legitimacy depends on these two factors. Under natural restrictions on these judgments, the legitimacy of some candidates can be unambiguously compared. In particular, we show that D. Trump’s election was more legitimate than G.W. Bush’s 2000 election. We also show that Trump’s election remains one of the most contentious in history.

Women and the legitimization of (not) engaging in paid work: logics from Lebanon

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how public (i.e. culture, state, paid work) and private (i.e. household) patriarchal structures work to shape a woman’s own legitimacy judgments concerning not engaging in paid work. The authors trace the intersection and interaction of legitimacy logics at both the collective (i.e. validity) and individual (i.e. propriety) levels, thereby gaining a better contextual understanding of each woman’s perception of career opportunities and limitations.Design/methodology/approachQualitative methodology drawing from 35 semi-structured interviews with Lebanese women. A multilevel analytic framework combining the institutional structures of private and public patriarchy with the micro-processes of institutional logics is used.FindingsLegitimization of (not) engaging in paid work is often tied to patriarchal logics that favor private sphere responsibilities for women, particularly related to the relational and instrumental logics of childrearing and husband-oriented responsibilities. Women’s legitimacy judgment formation seems to be based on multilevel cues and on differential instances of evaluative vs passive judgment formation. Some appear to passively assume the legitimacy of the logics; while others more actively question these logics. The findings suggest that active questioning is often overwhelmed by the negative and harsh realities making the woman succumb to passivity and choosing not to engage in paid work.Originality/valueThis study provides: a better mapping of the individual woman’s daily cognitions concerning the legitimacy of (not) engaging in paid work; and a unique multilevel analytic framework that can serve as a useful example of contextualizing career research.

Legitimacy judgments in neighborhood context

PurposePolicing differs across neighborhoods, but little is known about how context conditions residents’ assessments about police legitimacy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether procedural justice and police effectiveness differently contribute to legitimacy judgments depending on the security risk inherent in the context.Design/methodology/approachThe research applies a series of multi-level regression models using nearly 3,000 surveys of Trinidad and Tobago residents.FindingsPolice legitimacy and the conditions that promote legitimacy vary across neighborhoods. In “good” neighborhoods, individuals draw on police effectiveness and procedural justice to infer legitimacy, but in at-risk neighborhoods, residents’ views derive from effectiveness. Procedural justice does not play a significant role.Practical implicationsOne implication for police is that the current emphasis on evidence-based policing strategies, especially in high crime neighborhoods, can provide a mechanism to improve the generally negative views about police legitimacy held by those residents. The findings do not imply, however, that police need not be concerned about procedural justice in at-risk neighborhoods. In fact, as police improve their crime prevention prowess, views about how procedurally just their methods are increase in importance.Originality/valuePrior research addressing the antecedents of legitimacy has focused on individual demographic and attitudinal predictors. Only two prior studies have begun to investigate whether residents of different contexts may form their views based on different antecedents. This study outlines a theoretical basis for why different bases may be expected and then tests those expectations using rigorous statistical analyses.

Name, Name, But Different: How Novice and Experienced Entrepreneurs Legitimize Thier Ventures

New ventures face significant legitimacy challenges, compelling entrepreneurs to take symbolic actions and generate positive legitimacy judgments. However, while scholars have recently begun to acknowledge that legitimacy judgments are not uniform across audiences, the fact that entrepreneurs are not uniform either, escaped scrutiny. To address this gap, we zoom in on the role of prior entrepreneurial experience – a key individual difference related to entrepreneurs’ cognitive development – in shaping a single yet fundamental legitimation decision that every entrepreneur has to make: Naming the venture. We use a qualitative research design, including think-aloud verbal protocols and semi-structured interviews, to compare samples of experienced and novice entrepreneurs as they name exactly the same new venture that begins with exactly the same idea. Our key finding is that novice and experienced entrepreneurs approach venture naming differently, thereby making different legitimacy claims using distinct symbolic communication strategies. We build on these findings to theorize about the relationship between entrepreneurial experience and legitimation work and provide propositions for future research on new venture legitimacy in general and venture naming in particular.

The Power of Strong Plots: Storytelling Strategies for Venture Legitimation in Nascent Markets

Stories are crucial for ventures to attain legitimacy in the ambiguous contexts of nascent markets. However, while extant research explores how stories provide comprehension, new ventures cannot rest on cognitive legitimacy alone in the prevalence of high ambiguity. We study inductively how stories create legitimacy for ventures in nascent markets, through a four-year qualitative study of venture narrations in nascent markets within the broader field of electric vehicles. We find that managers invoke 'strong plots' of ventures in nascent markets in their storytelling, by weaving together archetypes from broader cultural discourses. We theorize how strong plots have the capacity to shape legitimacy judgments of audiences by eliciting institutionalized expectations about the focal venture, and we present a conceptual model of strong plots for pragmatic and moral legitimation of ventures in nascent markets. By reconciling this with existing research, we contribute a holistic and dynamic conception of venture legitimation strategies in nascent markets.

Nascent venture's green initiative and investor judgment of legitimacy and funding decision

Previous research has suggested that CSR initiatives are both resource- intensive and long-term oriented, and thus may not suit the limited resource base and time-constraint of nascent ventures. In this context, entrepreneurs have little incentive to invest in this type of activities at the emergence stage of their venture. However, entrepreneurs who hold pro-social beliefs and values often may have a desire to enact these in their venture project even though it may not bring any organizational benefits in the short-term. Our study investigates this tension through two experiments on a sample of 300 angel investors. Our findings indicate that green initiatives lead to favorable legitimacy judgment of the nascent venture, which in turn influences the likelihood of obtaining funding from investors. However, these findings are more likely to hold in a stable and predictable environment.

How Do Individuals Judge Organizational Legitimacy? Effects of Attributed Motives and Credibility on Organizational Legitimacy

This experimental study examines individuals’ legitimacy judgments. We develop a model that demonstrates the role of attributed motives and corporate credibility for the evaluation of organizational legitimacy and test this model with an experimental vignette study. Our results show that when a corporate activity creates benefits for the firm—in addition to social benefits—individuals attribute more extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are ascribed when a corporation is perceived as being driven by external rewards as opposed to an altruistic commitment to a social cause. Extrinsic motives negatively affect corporate credibility and organizational legitimacy judgments. This article contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of organizational legitimacy judgment by shedding light on the individual’s perspective and expounding the relationship between attributed motives, corporate credibility, and organizational legitimacy.

Legitimacy and institutional change in international organisations: a cognitive approach

AbstractWhy are some institutional designs perceived as more legitimate than others, and why is the same institutional design sometimes perceived as legitimacy-enhancing in one setting and not in another? In a world in which most international organisations (IOs) do not fully embody societal values and norms, such as democratic participation and equal treatment, why do legitimacy deficits in some organisations lead to pressure for institutional change while in others they are tolerated? These are important questions given that many analysts have diagnosed a ‘legitimacy crisis’ of IOs, but we argue that existing approaches are ill equipped to answer them. We show that the existing legitimacy literature has an implicit model of institutional change – the congruence model – but that this model has difficulty accounting for important patterns of change and non-change because it lacks microfoundations. We argue that attributions of legitimacy rest on perceptions and this implies the need to investigate the cognitive bases of legitimacy. We introduce a cognitive model of legitimacy and deduce a set of testable propositions to explain the conditions under which legitimacy judgments change and, in turn, produce pressures for institutional change in IOs.

Acts that Legitimate: Widening the Array of Predicate Policing Practices

Procedural justice theory predicts a relationship between police behavior, individuals’ normative evaluation of police, and decisions to comply with laws. Yet, prior studies of procedural justice have rather narrowly defined the potentially relevant predicates of police behavior. This study expands the scope of procedural justice theory by considering a broad array of policing components, including unobserved actions such as electronic surveillance, respecting the limits of one’s legal authority, and the unequal or equal distribution of policing resources between different groups. Analyzing data from a national probability sample of adults in England and Wales, we (a) present a comprehensive investigation of the heterogeneous elements of policing related to legitimacy judgments and (b) contribute to debate about the nature of legitimacy.

Attributes of legitimate venture failure impressions

The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure. We use a conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distancing themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation.