Legitimation Strategies Research Articles

Legitimation strategies in emerging ecosystems: The case of advanced air mobility in Hamburg

This study provides insights into the legitimation process of emerging ecosystems and strengthens the conceptual link between entrepreneurial ecosystems and economic geography. It examines existing theoretical frameworks on legitimation strategies in emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems by inquiring into advanced air mobility (AAM), an area in which innovation faces exceptionally high legitimation challenges. The initial integration of drones for logistics and air taxis for passenger transport is surrounded by ambiguous future visions that range from high expectations to concerns about developing a mobility form that is neither sustainable nor socially acceptable and affordable. Empirically, this article offers an analytical understanding of the collective legitimation strategies within the emerging AAM ecosystem in Hamburg, Germany. For this, we used multiple qualitative methods and data sources: (1) a contextualizing network analysis, (2) semi-structured interviews with 22 representatives of tech and policy development, and (3) participatory observation from applied research projects. Based on the empirical material, we find that the current conceptual debate underestimates the public sector's role in ecosystem emergence and legitimation. As AAM depends on fundamental regulatory change, authorities and state-owned companies in the aviation sector have a decisive influence on the emergence of the ecosystem. Furthermore, our findings highlight how global discourses shape local practices and expectations. By combining cross-sectoral knowledge, entrepreneurs and policymakers aim to identify feasible use cases for their place-specific context. Nevertheless, the lack of a collective identity within the ecosystem, which comes largely from the uncertainties of AAM, poses numerous challenges for ecosystem participants addressing their liability of newness.

Exploring and assessing issue communication – issue communication practices and consequences of issue response strategies for organizational reputation and legitimacy

PurposeAlthough issue management has received ample attention, changes in the media landscape and increased societal scrutiny are currently challenging organizations’ communicative handling of issues. This raises the question of how communication professionals currently perceive and communicatively deal with issues, and what impact issue response strategies have when organizations are addressed regarding their involvement in an issue.Design/methodology/approachWe explore issue communication perceptions and practices by communication professionals in two focus groups. A subsequent experimental study assesses the consequences of issue response strategies for corporate reputation and legitimacy and examines to what extent this relationship can be explained by skepticism while taking issue phase into account.FindingsAlthough most issue communication practices (still) resemble earlier descriptions, the focus groups also indicate the importance of timing and medium of issue communication. The experiment shows that organizations are better off responding to an issue than not responding at all. Organizations should choose for an accommodative or adaptive response to positively impact reputation and legitimacy, and should be aware of the phase of an issue. Remarkably, these empirical differences only apply for a sustainability issue, not for a social issue.Originality/valueThe focus group study illuminates current issue monitoring and communication practices in today’s challenging media and societal landscape. The subsequent experiment enhances our understanding of a sub-field of issue communication: the communicative options of organizations when they are the addressed actor in issues.

Beyond Journalism About Journalism?: Assessing the Impact of Metajournalistic Discourse on Journalism Studies

ABSTRACT This article presents a systematic review of the literature examining metajournalistic discourse, a term proposed by Carlson to encompass all public utterances about the nature and boundaries of journalism. After collecting all scholarly output (N = 77) between 2015 and 2023, a content analysis of the articles was conducted, with particular attention paid to two key areas: the components (actors, sites/audiences, and topics) and interpretive processes (definitional control, boundary-work, and legitimation) of discourse. Our findings allow us to make a number of observations regarding the current state of research: 1) the study of metajournalistic discourse is dominated by a Western bias; 2) research approaches remain journalist-centric; 3) boundary-work concerns above all the relationship of journalism to technology and market imperatives; 4) the democratic/societal role of journalism emerges as the main legitimation strategy; 5) the topics of metajournalistic discourse have organic and prompted origins.

Self-legitimation in selected speeches of Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram terrorists leader

ABSTRACT This paper examines self-legitimation in selected speeches of Abubakar Shekau, the longest-serving leader of Boko Haram terrorists (BHT). The article analyses seven of the speeches Shekau delivered during his reign as the BHT leader between 2009 and 2021, using f4analyse as a coding tool and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008. Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis) Discourse Legitimation approach to discourse analysis. The analysis discloses that Shekau uses three legitimation strategies: authorisation, moralisation and rationalisation to justify the actions and practices of BHT. The three legitimation strategies are linguistically realised through positive self-presentation strategy by engaging in self-glorification, personalising and collectivising victory, and claiming and announcing success to legitimate the mission of the group in carrying out the struggle. The strategies are deployed to positively present Abubakar Shekau as fighting a legitimate struggle.

The Why, How, and When of CSR Managers’ Internal Legitimation Strategies

The Why, How, and When of CSR Managers’ Internal Legitimation Strategies

Regional pathologies of late-stage neoliberalization: The case of Japan in East Asia

The ‘polycrisis’ of global capitalism has regional and national particularities that are worthy of exploration. In the case of East Asia, we see rising military, political and economic tensions which mirror global trends, but take a specific concrete regional form. We offer an explanation for these tensions in East Asia that highlight their roots in developments within the national models of capitalism that make up the region, in this case from the perspective of Japan. Drawing on a regulation theory framework, we show how Japan’s faltering national regime of accumulation has been through a constant process of neoliberalization since the early 1990s. This has prompted a number of institutional shifts, one of which includes increasing integration within the East Asian region. This, however, has produced a number of new problems, which we might consider to be general pathologies of late-stage neoliberalization and that are typically experienced at the regional level. In particular, we identify four interconnected and mutually reinforcing pathologies: heightened national economic and political rivalries; heightened market competition; increased vulnerability to disruption to region-wide commodity chains; and declining popular support that is being met by political attempts to adopt nationalist legitimation strategies. Such an account allows us to understand the obstacles and tensions preventing moves towards a smoother process of accumulation in the case of Japan in East Asia, and more generally throughout the contemporary global political economy, as well as offering a more complete account of the complexity and contradictions associated with the growing assertiveness of the Japanese state.

Anarchy and Empire: World-Conquerors and International Systems

Abstract Why are some international systems characterized by stable multipolarity while elsewhere conquest produces universal empires? We explain this variation through contrasting the conventional story of the consolidation of multipolar anarchy in Europe against the Ottoman conquest of the Near East and the Manchu conquest of greater China. Both the Ottomans and the Manchus developed the capacity for systemic conquest via hybridizing steppe and sedentary military techniques. Furthermore, both surmounted the legitimation gradient of conquest. The Ottomans and Manchus used cultural statecraft to prevent balancing coalitions and encourage bandwagoning and collaboration. Cultural statecraft comprised strategies of co-opting preexisting symbols of imperial rule and employing multivocal legitimacy strategies to sequentially appeal to multiple segmented audiences. In Europe, both military obstacles and religious confessional ideational divisions frustrated would-be conquerors. Multipolar anarchy is thus a contingent outcome in international politics rather than a constant, which can be extinguished by militarily powerful and culturally agile “world conquerors.”

Drowning Out Dissent: The Thai Military’s Quest to Fabricate Popular Support on Twitter

Why and how do autocracies discursively conduct digital astroturfing against their populations? As these regimes increasingly co-opt social media to manipulate online political discourse, the current political disinformation literature continues to privilege a Cold War paradigm, focusing on countries that dominate Western foreign policy priorities and concerns. Its normative underpinnings overshadow other understudied cases that have also been weaponizing social media to manipulate domestic online discourses. Concurrently, findings from ethnographic interviews and big data approaches remain theoretically disconnected from the long-held logics of regime stabilization. I argue that regime digital astroturfing follows offline events that spark online discourses with collective action potential. In countering these discourses, regime-linked digital astroturfers exploit social media affordances to discursively cheerlead the regime and devalue regime challengers to create a semblance of popular support for the former. I adopt a mixed-methods approach informed by Contextual Text Coding to examine 14,430 tweets linked to the Royal Thai Army in February 2020 to subject my central propositions to empirical scrutiny. My findings demonstrated that astroturfing efforts on Twitter throughout this period, which discursively cheerleaded the military/autocratic regime of General Prayut Chan-o-cha and devalued their pro-democratic opposition with negative frames, were spurred by a mass shooting incident in the city of Korat that exposed the ruling elites to widespread online backlash. This contribution deepens case-specific knowledge about an understudied case in the literature and also strengthens our understanding about the adaptations of authoritarian legitimation strategies in the digital era and the militarization of social media communication.

Introduction to the Dossier: “Culture, communication and consensus building. Legitimation strategies of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983)”

Introduction to the Dossier: “Culture, communication and consensus building. Legitimation strategies of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983)”

Leadership in international populism: How Viktor Orbán’s Hungary shows the way

Although a burgeoning literature explores the international dimensions of populism, we still know little about how populist leaders gain international popularity. This paper describes how Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, has emerged as the role model of international right-wing populism. It demonstrates that Orbán actively supplied himself as an example that like-minded politicians should follow. We draw on the concept of legitimation strategies to illustrate why Orbán markets himself as the leader of an international movement against liberal ideologues (Wajner, 2022). At the same time, populists in many countries have searched abroad for a successful model to follow. Orbán’s anti-migration policies and his defense of conservative family values constitute chapters of an illiberal playbook that right-wing populists are eager to implement. We use the concept of authoritarian learning to develop this demand-side perspective (Hall and Ambrosio, 2017). Empirically, we demonstrate our argument through an analysis of speeches delivered at a leading gathering of right-wing populists and moral conservatives: the Hungarian editions of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that took place in Budapest in 2022 and 2023.

From Humour to Impact: Internet Memes in Political Discourse through (de)legitimization

Internet memes, as artifacts of digital culture, quickly spread political ideas and critiques, transcending traditional media. Despite their prevalence, understanding how memes use semiotic elements and (de)legitimization strategies to shape political narratives on social media is limited. This research investigates how semiotic representations and (de)legitimization processes materialize in political discourse through social media memes. Using Van Leeuwen's (2005, 2007) framework of social semiotics and (de)legitimization strategies, we analyzed the visual and textual elements of 47 memes collected from January to July 2024; we selected 11 memes that represent Van Leeuwen's (de)legitimization strategies. The study revealed that memes convey complex political messages using semiotic resources, including color, gesture, and text. Intertextuality, humor, irony, rationalization, and moral evaluation are commonly used to criticize or support political figures and ideologies. This highlights the dynamic role of social media in political communication, where memes rapidly influence public perception. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding semiotic and rhetorical strategies in political communication analysis. The study contributes to the discourse of digital political communication by showing how memes, as cultural artifacts, shape political narratives and legitimacy. The research has significant implications for political strategists, communicators, and academics interested in the intersection of media, politics, and culture.

Tolerance as a Legitimation Strategy in Oman’s Political Discourse: From Religious to Foreign Policy Principle

ABSTRACT In the past few decades, the concept of tolerance has gained a central place in Oman’s political discourse and foreign policy. It is often attributed to the country’s national identity, which in turn is interpreted as deriving from Oman’s Ibadi tradition, the cosmopolitan character of its maritime history and its strategic geographic location. Despite greater attention being paid to the constructive nature of Oman’s identity, including its connection with Ibadism, however, a careful reflection on how the concept of tolerance developed from a religious to a foreign policy principle is still missing. A Discourse-Historical analysis of speeches directed towards a domestic and international audience highlights how the political discourse on tolerance, by reinforcing identity-engineering efforts, supported the Omani government’s legitimation and status-seeking purposes at home and abroad.

Uma abordagem discursiva das estratégias de legitimação do telejornalismo

This study discusses the processes of legitimization of Brazilian television journalism based on the identification and analysis of discursive strategies used by Jornal Nacional, broadcast by Rede Globo. Aiming to investigate how the events reported by the news affect the discursive legitimation strategies developed in the coverage, three journalistic events were selected for analysis: the dam failure in Brumadinho; the increase in fires in the Amazon, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This investigation has the analysis of discourse at three levels – situational, discursive, and semiolinguistic – proposed by Charaudeau as its theoretical-methodological basis. The main identified discursive legitimation strategies refer to self-referentiality, appropriation of amateur content, instantaneity, and didacticity, the operationalization of which is influenced by the complexity of the situational level of each event, understood as a space of coercion.

Insurgents’ legitimisation strategies: a comparison between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban

ABSTRACT This article compares the legitimacy of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. It analyses normative and instrumental legitimacy based on Max Weber’s traditional, legal, and charismatic sources. The research draws on published literature for exploring the Afghan Taliban and two qualitative studies undertaken in Pakistan to understand the Pakistani Taliban. It argues that the former gained both types of legitimacy, while the latter initially achieved some level but failed to maintain it. The article proposes a two-dimensional understanding of legitimacy, along its types and sources, and argues that insurgent groups lose legitimacy when they fail to perform effectively on both dimensions.

Research Adaptivity in Times of Disruption: Zig-Zagging Your Way through the Field During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT This study reflects on the field research interruptions that occurred around the world with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on my experience of in-person and remote fieldwork with vulnerable populations and sensitive research topics during this time, I introduce a “zig-zagging approach” that can be used as a research adaptivity strategy in times of disruption. I argue that “zig-zagging your way through the field” is a legitimate strategy as long as researchers acknowledge that changing from in-person to remote fieldwork (and vice versa) will alter various aspects of their relationship with the field including;(1) perception of positionality and authenticity; (2) processes of trust building and security challenges; and (3) experience of ethnographic immersion and observation. I offer mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of change and also discuss aspects that cannot be mitigated when working with vulnerable populations or sensitive research topics. I conclude on why going back—and forth (i.e., zig-zagging)—should become a practical solution when all else fails.

Women Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Their Legitimation Strategies: The Role of Digital Technologies

Women Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Their Legitimation Strategies: The Role of Digital Technologies

Organizational legitimacy and cross-border acquisition: emerging market multinationals

PurposeEmerging market multinationals often face a variety of legitimacy challenges as they engage in cross-border acquisitions in developed countries, which requires an assortment of legitimacy strategies best aligned with the legitimacy challenges they face. This study advocates for a configurational perspective that examines how different configurations of legitimacy challenges, organizational characteristics, and legitimacy strategies influence the likelihood of deal completion in cross-border acquisitions by emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs).Design/methodology/approachBased on 328 cross-border acquisition cases by Chinese firms, this study adopts the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the combined effects of institutional distance, political affinity, equity sought, architecture design, sensitive·industry and state-owned and enterprise (SOE) on cross-border acquisition completion.FindingsThis study identifies six pathways with different configurations for deal completion, suggesting that a deal's overall legitimacy falls at the intersection of the country-level institution and the firm-level characters and strategy evaluations.Originality/valueThis study investigates how nested legitimacy influences cross-border acquisition completion by offering a holistic and configurational understanding of the deal completion of cross-border acquisitions by EMNEs and yields useful insights for future research on cross-border acquisition completion and legitimacy.

KADEM’s vision of gender justice and neopatriarchal masculinity in illiberal Turkey

ABSTRACT Women’s and LGBTI + rights have always been under attack in Turkey, but recent developments in AKP’s attempts to consolidate a pro-family, pro-birth, and Islamist gender regime based on the ‘moral’ regulation of women and LGBTI + creates an atmosphere that must be examined in detail. KADEM, a women’s GONGO established in 2013, plays a crucial role in this anti-gender backlash context, positioning their line of action as a challenge to the global feminist attempts to impose Western standards on Turkish society while advocating for women’s rights from a culturalist position. We analyse KADEM’s construction of men and masculinities in the materials on their website to understand their strategies of legitimisation of a form of neopatriarchal masculinity along the traditional ‘family values’ to see how KADEM serves as a transmitter of an Islamic neopatriarchal culture, with its implicit justifications of men’s patriarchal roles and duties in a neoliberal society.

Multinational subsidiary's search for legitimacy: the isomorphism dilemma

The development of companies is limited by institutions that create common paths for all companies, such as the need for mimetic isomorphism. However, when it comes to multinational companies (MNCs), this reality is more complex. These companies face pressure at the global level (from the headquarters and other subsidiaries). Our proposal aims to elucidate how MNCs use the principles of organizational fields in their strategy for entering new markets. We investigate Amazon's entry strategy into the Brazilian market, assessing its level of isomorphism, decoupling, and legitimation. A single case study was conducted on Amazon's entry into Brazil to analyze the consistency of Kostova, Roth & Dacin's (2008) propositions concerning the neoinstitutional theory of organizational fields. Our analysis identified five types of strategies for legitimation in the organizational field: legitimation, synergy, endorsement, innovation, and adaptation, all observed in practice in the case.

Terminology, popularisation and ideology in contemporary China

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between terminology, the popularisation of scientific and technical knowledge and ideology in the People’s Republic of China. Specifically, it presents a study that focuses on an online daily column entitled ‘Scientific & Technical Term of the Day’ (每日科技名词), a terminology popularisation project promoted by China’s contemporary political leadership and implemented through the digital institutional platform Xuexi qiangguo 学习强国. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of critical discourse studies and legitimation in discourse, as well as frame analysis and frame semantics, the paper presents an analysis of expository texts designed to complement the knowledge provided by terminographic definitions of the terms published in the daily column. The focus is on the framing of China and the Party-state in these texts, which, it is argued, can also be interpreted as legitimation strategies.