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Legitimacy Revisited: Disentangling Propriety, Validity, and Consensus

July 2020
Journal of Management Studies 58(3)

July 2020
58(3)

DOI:10.1111/joms.12615

Authors:

Patrick Haack

University of Lausanne

Oliver Schilke

The University of Arizona

Lynne Zucker

University of California, Los Angeles

Recent research has conceptualized legitimacy as a multi-level phenomenon comprising propriety and validity. Propriety refers to an individual evaluator’s belief that a legitimacy object is appropri-ate for its social context, whereas validity denotes an institutionalized, collective-level perception of appropriateness. In this article, we refine this multi-level understanding of legitimacy by adding a third, meso-level construct of “consensus”, which we define as the agreement between evaluators’ propriety beliefs. Importantly, validity and consensus are distinct and can be incongruent, given that an institutionalized perception can hide underlying disagreement. Disentangling validity from consensus is a crucial extension of the multi-level theory of legitimacy, because it enables an im-proved understanding of the legitimacy processes that precede sudden and unanticipated institu-tional change. In particular, while previous works considered revised propriety beliefs as the start-ing point for institutional change, our account emphasizes that the disclosure of the actual (vs. merely assumed) belief distribution within a social context may instigate institutional change. To study the interplay of propriety, validity, and consensus empirically, we propose a set of experimental designs specifically geared towards improving knowledge of the role of legitimacy and its components in institutional change.

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Legitimacy Revisited:

Disentangling Propriety, Validity, and Consensus

Patrick Haack (Corresponding author)

University of Lausanne

patrick.haack@unil.ch

Oliver Schilke

University of Arizona

oschilke@arizona.edu

Lynne Zucker

University of California, Los Angeles

zucker@ucla.edu

Lausanne, July 15, 2020

Paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Management Studies

Acknowledgements: We thank handling editor Dries Faems and three anonymous reviewers for

their guidance and developmental feedback during the review process. We received valuable

comments and suggestions from Anna Jasinenko and William McKinley. We are grateful for the

helpful feedback by participants at the 2016 Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Seattle

and the 2017 EGOS Colloquium in Copenhagen. Derek Harmon ideated the storytelling design

during a visit in Lausanne, and important aspects of the consensus constructs were developed in

ongoing empirical research with Jost Sieweke and Mike Pfarrer.

Legitimacy Revisited:

Disentangling Propriety, Validity, and Consensus

Abstract

Recent research has conceptualized legitimacy as a multi-level phenomenon comprising proprie-

ty and validity. Propriety refers to an individual evaluator’s belief that a legitimacy object is

appropriate for its social context, whereas validity denotes an institutionalized, collective-level

perception of appropriateness. In this article, we refine this multi-level understanding of legiti-

macy by adding a third, meso-level construct of “consensus”, which we define as the agreement

between evaluators’ propriety beliefs. Importantly, validity and consensus are distinct and can

be incongruent, given that an institutionalized perception can hide underlying disagreement.

Disentangling validity from consensus is a crucial extension of the multi-level theory of legiti-

macy, because it enables an improved understanding of the legitimacy processes that precede

sudden and unanticipated institutional change. In particular, while previous works considered

revised propriety beliefs as the starting point for institutional change, our account emphasizes

that the disclosure of the actual (vs. merely assumed) belief distribution within a social context

may instigate institutional change. To study the interplay of propriety, validity, and consensus

empirically, we propose a set of experimental designs specifically geared towards improving

knowledge of the role of legitimacy and its components in institutional change.

Keywords: consensus, experiments, institutional change, microfoundations, legitimacy, proprie-

ty, validity

INTRODUCTION

The burgeoning multi-level view of legitimacy seeks to reconcile the perspective that le-

gitimacy may reside at the collective level “independent from particular observers” (Suchman,

1995, p. 576) with the view that legitimacy involves the perceptions of individual evaluators

(Tost, 2011). Drawing on a distinction that was introduced more than 100 years ago by Weber

(1978[1918]), Bitektine and Haack (2015) advanced a multi-level theory of legitimacy that dif-

ferentiates between “propriety” and “validity” as the individual- and collective-level judgments

made in the legitimacy process, respectively. Following these theoretical advancements, empiri-

cal research has started to investigate changes in propriety beliefs (Finch et al., 2015; Jahn et al.,

2020) and to describe the promotion of propriety and validity through communication (Gauthier

and Kappen, 2017). In addition, scholars have examined cross-level interactions between propri-

ety and validity (Haack and Sieweke, 2018) and elaborated the effect of these interactions on

organizational change (Huy et al., 2014), practice implementation (Jacqueminet and Durand,

2019), and institutionalization (Arshed et al., 2019).

Recognizing that legitimacy results from a process of social judgment formation that en-

tails multiple levels has been a pivotal step in extending and revising insights from previous

conceptualizations of organizational legitimacy (Deephouse et al., 2017; Suddaby et al., 2017).

However, despite all the efforts that have been devoted to the study of legitimacy, the longstand-

ing practice of equating legitimacy with collective agreement has impaired scholars’ capacity to

theorize the precise legitimacy processes that precede institutional change, and has stalled intel-

lectual progress in this core area of organizational research. While extant research has often im-

plied that institutional change is initiated through intra-individual change in propriety beliefs

(e.g., Greenwood et al., 2002; Tost, 2011), we theorize that institutional change can also be in-

stigated when individual evaluators discern the distribution of others’ propriety beliefs in a ref-

erence group. Importantly, sudden disclosure of the extent to which an apparently valid legiti-

macy object is agreed upon in terms of propriety beliefs can have drastic institutional conse-

quences. In some instances, validity may involve low agreement or even significant disagree-

ment in propriety beliefs, making institutional stability inherently fragile (Bitektine and Haack,

2015; Suddaby et al., 2017). In other instances, an institutional arrangement may lack validity

even though a silent majority of evaluators deems it proper, suggesting that an alternative insti-

tutional order may enjoy greater approval and potential support than commonly assumed.

Hence, there is a clear need to theorize and study the scope and nature of the (potential) incon-

gruity between validity and the distribution of propriety beliefs.

We contribute to legitimacy research by addressing this major gap in two ways. First, we

advance the largely unexplored meso-level legitimacy component of “consensus”, which forms

the missing link connecting the micro- and the macro-levels of legitimacy. Whereas validity

denotes an institutionalized, collective-level perception of appropriateness and a status of supra-

individual exteriority illustrating “how things are,” consensus represents a meso-level construct

that denotes the degree to which evaluators in a given social collective agree that a legitimacy

object is proper. Although consensus and validity overlap in the sense that an institutionalized

perception may reflect agreement with respect to propriety beliefs, they are not the same, given

that an institutionalized perception can hide underlying disagreement. That is, while a legitimacy

object can be valid at the collective level, the actual consensus among the individuals within that

collective can be either high (i.e., virtually all evaluators agree that a legitimacy object is proper)

or low (i.e., a considerable share of evaluators disagrees that the legitimacy object is proper,

meaning that propriety beliefs are heterogeneously distributed). Adding the consensus construct

to legitimacy theory clarifies that seemingly widely endorsed institutional arrangements may

mask private dissent, which—when revealed—may lead individual evaluators to change their

perceptions and behaviors and to support institutional change efforts. Conversely, marginalized

institutional arrangements may appear invalid even though many evaluators consider them prop-

er in private, resulting in low validity and high consensus. We expect institutional change to

become likely whenever such an incongruity between validity and consensus is identified and

publicly revealed. Thus, introducing the concept of consensus has the potential to significantly

advance our understanding of the legitimacy processes that precede sudden and unanticipated

institutional change.

Second, theoretical and methodological choices necessarily co-evolve, such that theory

cannot progress in the absence of adequate methods for testing and validating the relationships

between its core concepts (Haack et al., 2020a). As such, theoretical progress requires advance-

ments in empirical research and methodology. Accordingly, in order to advance empirical re-

search on legitimacy as a multi-level process, we propose a set of experimental designs that are

geared specifically toward the study of the intricate interactions between propriety, validity, and

consensus, thus allowing for testing our proposed theory. Experimental designs can enable

scholars to explore relationships “that are often suggested but difficult to isolate in contextually

rich field studies” (David and Bitektine, 2009, p. 171), and they can be particularly useful for

differentiating between the distinct perceptual components of legitimacy. Recognizing the “val-

ue of method in advancing theory” (Greenwald, 2012, p. 106), our paper suggests that bringing

in experiments can help to significantly advance or even reorient legitimacy research in institu-

tional theory, in particular with respect to the underlying dynamics and legitimacy processes of

institutional change.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Research on legitimacy, commonly defined as a “generalized perception or assumption

that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574), has

become increasingly prominent in management and organization studies—and, in particular, in

institutional theory (Harmon et al., 2015; Suddaby et al., 2017)—to the extent that legitimacy

has been described as “perhaps the most central concept in institutional research” (Colyvas and

Powell, 2006, p. 308). The significant scholarly attention devoted to the topic is evidenced by

the increasing flow of papers devoted to the analysis of legitimacy (e.g., Castello et al., 2016;

Etter et al., 2018; Haack et al., 2014; Fisher et al., 2016; Hengst et al., 2020; Huy et al., 2014;

Jacqueminet and Durand, 2019; Lewis et al., 2020; Scherer et al., 2013). This line of research

stresses that through legitimacy, organizations acquire ideational and material support (e.g., ac-

cess to financial and human resources) and increase their prominence and influence, all of which

are fundamental to their growth and survival (Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002).

The notion of legitimacy has been applied to a plethora of theoretical and empirical con-

texts, adding considerable surplus meaning to the construct (Suddaby et al., 2017). Scholars

have often relied on Suchman’s (1995) rather broad definition of legitimacy, without specifying

what particular aspect of legitimacy they are examining (Johnson et al., 2006). As a result, legit-

imacy research in institutional theory is currently entering a formative phase, characterized by

attempts to bring greater construct clarity and theoretical coherence to the subject area

(Deephouse et al., 2017). Recent works have specified different perspectives in legitimacy re-

search (Suddaby et al., 2017) and have distinguished legitimacy from related constructs such as

reputation and status (Bitektine, 2011; Bitektine et al., 2020; Washington and Zajac, 2005) as

well as stigma (Devers et al., 2009; Helms et al., 2019). Whereas institutional theory has focused

mainly on the legitimacy process at the collective level (Zelditch, 2004) and maintained that an

object’s legitimacy depends on the approval of a social group as a whole, the notion of legitima-

cy as a “generalized perception” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574) ultimately derives from the coales-

cence of the perceptions and judgments of individual evaluators (Tost, 2011; Zimmerman and

Zeitz, 2002). Hence, it is important to understand legitimacy judgment formation and change at

the individual level while simultaneously achieving greater clarity and theoretical coherence

about legitimacy’s inherent multi-level nature.

Drawing on the work of Weber (1978[1918]) and subsequent research in sociology (Dorn-

busch and Scott, 1975; Zelditch, 2001), Johnson and colleagues (2006) highlighted the dual na-

ture of legitimacy and re-conceptualized its formation as an intricate social process consisting of

validity, a collective-level perception of appropriateness, and propriety, an individual evaluator’s

belief that a legitimacy object is appropriate for its social context. In this view, legitimacy occurs

“simultaneously at the collective level (where perceptions of appropriateness are created, shared,

and validated) and at the level of the individual, who uses collective perceptions to derive his or

her judgment and engages in appropriate action” (Haack and Sieweke, 2018, p. 487). Bitektine

and Haack (2015) advanced the multi-level view of legitimacy and developed a theory of how

macro-level validity shapes or even determines micro-level judgments and behaviors and how

these judgments and behaviours coalesce to constitute validity. They highlighted that

institutional stability at the macro level can be based on “silenced” micro-level heterogeneity in

propriety beliefs, as individual evaluators may choose not to disclose their propriety beliefs for

fear of social sanctions, because they (sometimes erroneously) perceive their beliefs represent a

minority opinion. It is only after the removal of factors conducive to silencing that individual

evaluators may disclose their propriety beliefs and start to actively challenge the status quo.

Similarly, Tolbert and Darabi (2020) pointed out that different kinds of institutional pressures

may generate variations in motives for conformity; they illuminated how the explicit recognition

of these motives can explain observed heterogeneity in individual and organizational behavior.

These works suggest that to explain institutional change, it is crucial to understand the

antecedents and underlying dynamics of multi-level legitimacy formation, particularly with

respect to the interaction between propriety and validity.

Although the validity-propriety distinction is relatively established in the field of sociolo-

gy (e.g., Johnson et al., 2006), much legitimacy research in institutional theory, and more gener-

ally in organization and management studies, has ignored the propriety concept and focused

exclusively on validity as the collective-level conceptualization of legitimacy (Zelditch, 2004).

While most studies do not even make the focal level of analysis explicit, some of them confuse

propriety with validity. For instance, some authors imply a collective-level understanding of

legitimacy by referring to Suchman’s (1995) definition of legitimacy as a “generalized percep-

tion,” even though they are actually concerned with the analysis of individual judgments of le-

gitimacy (e.g., Brown and Toyoki, 2013; Foreman and Whetten, 2002; Higgins and Gulati,

2006). Suchman’s (1995) influential tripartite conception of legitimacy (cognitive, moral, and

pragmatic) itself implies a conflation of propriety and validity components, as pragmatic legiti-

macy is said to rest on the “self-interested calculations” of individual actors (p. 578), suggesting

that legitimacy is not “independent of particular observers” (p. 576). This conceptual ambiguity,

which characterizes much of the extant research on legitimacy, has made it rather difficult to

integrate empirical findings coherently and hindered progress in this important area of research.

Conflating propriety with validity is highly problematic, because these two constructs constitute

two fundamentally different components of legitimacy and are likely to have distinct anteced-

ents and behavioral consequences. Thus, failing to clearly distinguish between these two com-

ponents of legitimacy has introduced considerable concept ambiguity and impeded the ability of

legitimacy researchers to advance scholarly understandings on legitimacy as an explanandum in

its own right (Suddaby et al., 2017).

In this paper, we seek to bring clarity to existing legitimacy research in institutional theory

and further advance the understanding of legitimacy as a multi-level phenomenon. While the

model of Bitektine and Haack (2015) has drawn attention to the complex interactions between

micro and macro levels of legitimacy, their framework remains ambiguous, as it has equated the

institutionalized part of legitimacy with common agreement, defining validity as “consensus

opinion shared by others” (p. 51; emphasis added). Hence, although Bitektine and Haack (2015)

pointed to the possibility that validity may conceal heterogeneity in propriety beliefs, their re-

search has not conceptually disentangled validity from common agreement.

We address this important gap by introducing a missing link—that of consensus, a meso-

level construct that describes the degree to which evaluators within a social group agree that a

given legitimacy object is proper. We elaborate that consensus and validity are not the same,

given that a taken-for-granted perception of validity may conceal dissent among individual

evaluators, and we theorize that trustful communication and social interaction among evaluators

plays a key role in revealing the actual (vs. apparent) consensus within a reference group. In

addition, we explicate why the distinction between validity and consensus constitutes a crucial

extension of the multi-level theory of legitimacy and elaborate why theorizing and testing the

relationship between the legitimacy componentsi is essential for advancing scholarly understand-

ing of the legitimacy processes preceding sudden and unanticipated institutional change

(Clemente and Roulet, 2015; Oliver, 1992). In the following sections, we will first examine each

of the three legitimacy components and then develop theory on their complex interactions. We

will focus particularly on the role of consensus in these interactions and in related legitimacy

and institutional change processes.

Propriety: Legitimacy at the Individual Level

The individual level of legitimacy has so far received only scant attention in institutional

theory and organization and management studies. Zelditch (2004) even went so far as to suggest

that institutional theory has no concept of legitimacy at the individual level. Consequently, rela-

tively little is known about how the individuals within a specific evaluator group assess the pro-

priety of organizations, practices, structures, and other types of legitimacy objects and, by exten-

sion, how these individuals construe legitimacy. Indeed, before the conceptual contributions by

Tost (2011) and Bitektine and Haack (2015), virtually no attempt had been made by institution-

alists to theorize or examine the formation and change of propriety.

Propriety is the individual-level component of legitimacy and refers to an individual eval-

uator’s endorsement of a legitimacy object or the evaluator’s belief that the essence, qualities, or

actions of that object are appropriate for its social context (Dornbusch and Scott, 1975; Tost,

2011). The term “legitimacy object” denotes the focal entity that is being assessed, such as an

organization, practice, or procedure (Johnson, 2004). Evaluators typically form judgments about

an object’s propriety in a “passive” mode, where they operate as “intuiters” who quasi-

automatically draw on judgment heuristics (Haack et al., 2014). Intuiters use heuristics such as

the judgments and actions of others (Rao et al., 2001; Rossman and Schilke, 2014) and draw on

associations, analogies, or similarities between one object and another already legitimate object

(Baum and Oliver, 1991; Stuart et al., 1999). Using such cues allows evaluators to reach a

judgment quickly and effortlessly (Kahneman and Frederick, 2002). However, under conditions

of competing or ambiguous institutional prescriptions (Greenwood et al., 2011) or in the after-

math of an exogenous shock (Greenwood et al., 2002; Tost, 2011), evaluators may also render a

propriety belief in a more “active” mode, in which they deliberately and carefully assess the

legitimacy object on the basis of specific standards and principles (Huy et al., 2014; Lamin and

Zaheer, 2012).

Propriety beliefs have important behavioral consequences. If the prescriptions of specific

judgment standards and principles are met, evaluators deem the object proper, view it as a desir-

able model of action, and ultimately support the legitimacy object (Walker, 2014). In contrast, if

the object is deemed not consistent with standards and principles, evaluators do not grant propri-

ety and may withhold support (potentially contingent on their perceptions of validity; see be-

low). In cases of severe transgressions, such as organizational wrongdoing or scandal (Greve et

al., 2010), evaluators will disapprove of the object and deem it improper (Hudson, 2008; Devers

et al., 2009), with behavioral reactions ranging from avoiding (Hudson and Okhuysen, 2009) or

resisting the legitimacy object (Huy et al., 2014) to openly condemning it (Maguire and Hardy,

2009).

Validity: Legitimacy at the Collective Level

Validity is the institutionalized, collective-level component of legitimacy and describes the

acceptability of an object at the collective level or the “generalized perception” that the nature or

activities of a legitimacy object are appropriate for its social context (Suchman, 1995). Once

formed, validity “has a life of its own” (Zelditch, 2006, p. 346), meaning it exists objectively as

a social fact and is largely independent of the subjective propriety beliefs of single evaluators.

The “facticity” of valid objects signals to evaluators how things are, creating the perception of a

natural, inevitable, and collectively approved order (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). Although an

inherently collective-level construct, validity as the objectified part of legitimacy also affects the

appraisal process of individual evaluators and enter evaluators’ cognition in the form of a “valid-

ity cue,” which they can use to form a subjective validity belief (Tost, 2011). Such a validity

belief represents an individual’s judgment that a legitimacy object is perceived as appropriate by

a collectivity of evaluators. Evaluators’ perceptions of validity (i.e., validity beliefs) are bol-

stered (1) by authorization, which means that an authority (e.g., an expert or high-status actor)

has acknowledged a given object as legitimate and (2) by endorsement, which means that an

evaluator’s peers have accepted the object’s legitimacy (Dornbusch and Scott, 1975). Indeed,

approval by “judgment validation institutions” such as the media, government, and the judicial

system (Bitektine and Haack, 2015, p. 51) and “voices of the common man” (Vaara, 2014, p.

506) constitute major sources of validity. It follows that the views and assessments of others

play an important role in the construction of validity (Johnson, 2004). In addition, the absence or

lacking visibility of contrary activities constitutes a subtle but equally powerful source of validi-

ty (Haack and Sieweke, 2018; Tost, 2011).

Validity, in turn, has important implications for evaluators’ propriety beliefs and their be-

havior and thus ultimately for the stability of social systems and institutions. Given that alterna-

tives are “literally unthinkable” in taken-for-granted contexts (Zucker, 1983, p. 5), the prescrip-

tions that derive from a valid object are binding. When an object is valid, individual evaluators

do not question it; they simply comply (Johnson, 2004). While evaluators consider proper ob-

jects desirable and thus follow prescriptions voluntarily and sometimes enthusiastically, compli-

ance with valid, institutionalized objects is based on social obligation and control (Johnson,

2004; Johnson et al., 2006). The coercive power of validity has been demonstrated by research

finding that validity attenuates negative emotions in response to injustice, and as a result it helps

sustain stratified order (Johnson et al., 2016). As mentioned above, in cases where validity con-

flicts with propriety, evaluators may choose to conceal their propriety beliefs because they fear

social sanctions and a loss of social approval (Bitektine and Haack, 2015), to the extent that they

may even actively enforce the support of a valid legitimacy object they privately consider im-

proper (Centola et al., 2005; Willer et al., 2009). By contrast, invalidity reduces people’s com-

pliance and support, even if evaluators, in private, consider a legitimacy object to be proper

(Massey et al., 1997).

Validity may also affect compliance indirectly through its effect on propriety. Works

based on the status theory of legitimacy suggest that referential structures (which represent legit-

imacy at the collective level) enable evaluators to develop their propriety beliefs (Berger et al.,

1998; Ridgeway and Berger, 1986). Other research has shown that evaluators are more likely to

judge a legitimacy object as proper that is (perceived as) valid (Walker et al., 1988; Yoon and

Thye, 2011), even if they initially deemed it improper (Hegtvedt and Johnson, 2000; Johnson et

al., 2000). For instance, evaluators have been found to gradually adapt their propriety beliefs

regarding inequality to the perceived validity of economic inequality (Haack and Sieweke,

2018). Validity thus has a bolstering effect on propriety and a “canceling effect” on impropriety

(Zelditch, 2001, p. 44). Conversely, when a legitimacy object lacks validity, evaluators may

begin to question the object and are more likely to disapprove of it personally.

Consensus: The Missing Link in Legitimacy Theoryii

Extending the legitimacy dichotomy of propriety and validity, we suggest that a meso-

level component is needed to bridge the micro and the macro of legitimacy—that of consensus.

While consensus has not yet been systematically elaborated in institutional theory, several

scholars have hinted at it in passing, noting that it constitutes an important element or outcome

of the legitimacy determination process. For instance, when describing the “legitimacy-as-

process” perspective, Suddaby, Bitektine, and Haack (2017, p. 452) suggest that legitimacy “is

understood to occur as the product of consensus between multiple actors in a social field”. Other

works have described legitimacy maintenance as “dynamics of agreement and disagreement”

(Patriotta et al., 2011, p. 1808) and suggested that legitimacy depends on evaluators’ consensus

about what features and actions a legitimacy object should have in order to be accepted in a spe-

cific context (Cattani et al., 2008). Similarly, Drori and Honig (2013, p. 371) proposed that legit-

imacy evolves and becomes validated by a “general consensus in society”.

Notwithstanding the potential importance of consensus for legitimacy theory, much ambi-

guity exists with respect to the construct of consensus, or “what people are actually agreeing on”

(Markóczy, 2001, p. 1014). Previous works (including our own) have regularly conflated con-

sensus with validity, often implying that consensual agreement and validity are literally the same

and treating these concepts quasi-synonymously. However, we propose that this practice is mis-

guided and that scholars are better served in treating these two components of legitimacy as ana-

lytically distinct. As discussed above, validity may lead individuals to hide their propriety be-

liefs; thus, a valid legitimacy object does not necessarily reflect agreement but can in fact be

subject to significant (yet concealed) disagreement. Although we acknowledge that validity may

inform propriety beliefs (as discussed above), a notable portion of evaluators may resist validity

pressures. Hence, we challenge the assumption, often made implicitly, that consensus and validi-

ty are virtually the same; we develop a refined understanding of consensus and disentangle it

from validity. In particular, the specification of consensus and validity as related but distinct

elements in the multi-level legitimacy concept offers an important correction to the model by

Bitektine and Haack (2015) and has the potential to proffer significant advancements in scholar-

ly understandings of the legitimacy processes preceding institutional change. Specifically, and as

elaborated below, disentangling validity from consensus supports the critical but largely over-

looked insight that institutional arrangements that are considered valid may in fact be inherently

fragile, facing contestation and sudden decline once the existence of substantial disagreement is

revealed (Patriotta et al., 2011).

We define consensus as the degree to which individual members of a reference group

(e.g., team, organization, industry, field, or society at large) agree that the essence, features, or

activities of a legitimacy object are proper for a given social context. High consensus indicates

that a propriety belief is shared by most evaluators within a reference group, whereas low con-

sensus indicates that propriety is contested (e.g., Pfarrer et al., 2008; Bundy and Pfarrer, 2015).iii

Hence, despite the existence of a “generalized perception” that the nature or activities of a legit-

imacy object are appropriate for its social context and are thus valid, in the sense of being exte-

rior to the subjective experience of individual evaluators (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Such-

man, 1995), substantial heterogeneity in propriety beliefs may nonetheless exist, as a nontrivial

number of evaluators may privately oppose the object. It follows that a legitimacy object’s valid-

ity can be associated with very different, yet often concealed, distributions of propriety beliefs.

As Figure 1 illustrates, a valid legitimacy object may display a normal distribution of propriety

beliefs (panel 1.1), a distribution of greater or lower variation in propriety beliefs (panels 1.2 and

1.3), a left or right skewed distribution (panels 1.4 and 1.5), or even a bimodal distribution re-

flecting a polarization in evaluators’ propriety beliefs (panel 1.6). Many other distributions are

conceivable.

––FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE––

If silencing is present or communication through which evaluators can reveal their proprie-

ty beliefs is lacking, the true nature of the belief distribution will be masked by perceptions of

validity. In such contexts, evaluators have no, or only partial, information about the distribution

of propriety beliefs in their reference group. Evaluators may then openly support the legitimacy

object on the basis of their validity beliefs, and the absence of public challenge contributes fur-

ther to the object’s stability (Correll et al., 2017). While the exact belief distribution frequently

is unknown, the gradual or sudden disclosure of the degree to which a legitimacy object is con-

sensually approved may have drastic institutional consequences, depending on the size of the

congruity between validity and consensus. By “congruity,” we mean the degree to which con-

sensus maps onto validity. For instance, a valid legitimacy object can be matched by substantial

agreement in propriety beliefs (high validity-consensus congruity) or it could be associated with

heterogeneity in propriety beliefs (low validity-consensus congruity, or high incongruity). Alt-

hough an incongruity between validity and consensus may have been concealed, it looms in the

background and may erupt when being problematized, exposing the fissures of a seemingly sta-

ble institutional order. As such, it is important to analyze the distribution of propriety beliefs

about a given legitimacy object (consensus) and contrast this analysis with the (perceived) valid-

ity of that object.

The distinction between validity and consensus clarifies that wide consent is not a neces-

sary condition for validity. Even if evaluators do not endorse an object individually, this object

can still be considered valid if these evaluators falsely assume that others in their reference

group believe the object is proper, thus granting the object validity (Correll et al., 2017).

Suddaby and colleagues (2017) posited that, in extreme cases of collective misperceptions, legit-

imacy objects may remain valid even though not a single evaluator privately endorses the object.

In contrast, when a majority of evaluators privately hold favorable propriety beliefs about an

object (high consensus), this object can still lack validity if evaluators falsely assume that most

of the evaluators in their reference group hold unfavorable propriety beliefs and accordingly fail

to disclose their own beliefs (Zelditch and Walker, 2003; Suddaby et al., 2017). The validity of a

legitimacy object can thus exist and guide behavior even in the presence of incongruent consen-

sus—especially, as we shall elaborate next, when network ties among the members of a group

are weak, which makes it difficult for evaluators to communicate trustfully and detect the actual

or “true” propriety beliefs of the other members of a given reference group (Canales, 2016;

Westphal and Bednar, 2005; Zhu and Westphal, 2011). The following sections first explicate the

conditions that enable evaluators to discern that validity may not be congruent with actual con-

sensus and then theorize the legitimacy processes that unfold once evaluators discover this in-

congruity.

Figure 2 represents a schematic illustration of the key arguments we develop below. While

we mostly illustrate relevant dynamics in the context of delegitimation, our argument could be

laterally reversed to describe a legitimation process. That is, our model may also be applied to

explain the dynamics that contribute to strengthening the legitimacy of emerging and not yet

fully established institutional arrangements—that is, alternative “sociocultural constructions that

prescribe appropriate organizational behaviors and that shape and enforce patterns of interests

and privilege” (Micelotta et al., 2017, p. 1886). Indeed, delegitimation of the status quo is fre-

quently associated with the legitimation of innovation and novelty (Oliver, 1992); while the va-

lidity of an established legitimacy object may gradually erode, the validity of another not yet

taken-for-granted legitimacy object may grow.iv

––FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE––

WHY CONSENSUS MATTERS

Our proposed account emphasizes that consensus does not necessarily depend on, and is

conceptually distinct from, validity. The implications of the distinction between validity and

consensus are profound. Acknowledging that validity and consensus are not the same implies

that the persistence and stability of valid legitimacy objects—including status orders in organi-

zations (e.g., Berger et al., 1998; Correll et al., 2017), widely diffused yet unpopular norms (e.g.,

Prentice and Miller, 1993; Willer et al., 2009), and systems of social or political dominance

(e.g., Kuran, 1995)—can be solely based on an “illusion of support” and are thus inherently

fragile (Centola et al., 2005, p. 1010; Rao et al., 2001). As (the appearance of) consensus breaks

down, validity loses its influence (Asch, 1951). If consensus for a valid legitimacy object is

merely presumed but not real, then the disclosure that a valid object is in fact contested may

initiate a process of problematization, delegitimation, and deinstitutionalization, opening up op-

portunities for the legitimation of a new institutional order and thus institutional change (Green-

wood et al., 2002). Conversely, an “illusion of resistance” may prevail for those legitimacy ob-

jects that are seemingly contested or opposed but actually enjoy substantial private endorsement,

which—when publicly revealed—may trigger a process of legitimation.

Revealing the Actual Degree of Consensus

What conditions enable evaluators to identify the degree to which a valid legitimacy object

is actually consensually approved? Although several circumstances might play a role, we high-

light the critical importance of (1) communication ties and (2) collective action in helping evalu-

ators discern the actual degree of consensus in their reference group, i.e., whether most individ-

uals endorse or have concerns about a valid legitimacy object or whether there is significant dis-

agreement about the acceptability of the object. As illustrated in Figure 2 (T0), in the absence of

communication ties and interaction, evaluators may silence propriety beliefs which they consid-

er to be inconsistent with validity. For instance, research has found that investment analysts tend

not to disclose their reservations regarding the adoption of stock repurchase plans (a valid legit-

imacy object in this context) because they underestimate the extent to which other analysts share

their concerns—a phenomenon that is less pronounced when analysts communicate frequently

(Zhu and Westphal, 2011). Similarly, Westphal and Bednar (2005) suggested that managers are

less likely to silence their unfavorable propriety beliefs regarding a company’s strategy when

they have opportunities to casually interact and communicate with other managers. Research by

Canales (2016) indicated that informal dyadic communication and settings where evaluators can

speak “off the record” are particularly effective in promoting the disclosure of silenced propriety

beliefs, whereas communication in larger group settings, such as public forums, is found to con-

solidate the (perceived) validity of a legitimacy object. In addition, research on trust has shown

that as individuals interact with each other, they develop interpersonal trust and become increas-

ingly willing to engage in risk taking (Cook et al., 2009; Cook et al., 2005). Such risk taking can

take the form of revealing personal propriety beliefs to one’s counterparts, such that evaluators

may become aware of the level of consensus about a particular legitimacy object. All of these

insights suggest that evaluators who previously silenced their propriety beliefs may start to voice

their concerns and participate in public debates and deliberations. As illustrated in Figure 2 (T1

and T2), in such contexts evaluators increasingly discern that validity is contested; as a result, the

support for an established legitimacy object or institutional arrangement is gradually eroded

(Johnson et al., 2006; Oliver, 1992).

However, not all opportunities for communication are equally effective in triggering this

process, as distinct streams of research suggest that greater connectivity and repeated social in-

teraction do not automatically contribute to the disclosure of a potential incongruity between

validity and consensus. For instance, Canales (2016) offered anecdotal evidence that interaction

in public forums may not reveal but instead actually perpetuate silencing and thus harden incon-

gruity between validity and consensus. Further, small group research has theorized that con-

formity pressures can lead to “groupthink,” a psychological phenomenon that has been found to

promote poor group decisions (Janis, 1972). Groupthink is likely to occur under specific condi-

tions, such as high group cohesiveness, directive leadership, homogeneity of group members’

social background, lack of methodological procedures, high stress, and group members’ low

self-esteem (for a review, see Esser, 1998). These conditions hamper the expression of multiple

or contrary viewpoints and the evaluation of viable alternatives. While group decisions are often

unanimously accepted as valid and collectively approved, they may mask significant dissent

among group members’ preferences. From this research, it follows that creating favorable condi-

tions for the expression of dissent can help reduce incongruity between validity and consensus.

Hence, “genuine” communication reveals actual consensus while “conformist” communication

will only stabilize false impressions of unanimous support; and encouraging critique and institu-

tionalizing a culture of speaking up through the implementation of whistleblowing and om-

budsman policies will likely help reveal incongruity. Halbesleben and colleagues (2007) con-

cluded that the risk of silencing can be reduced when evaluators are systematically exposed to

the true beliefs of other evaluators; for example, through a culture of open communication where

conflict is encouraged, not suppressed, and where evaluators are emboldened to disagree with

the majority opinion and openly voice their concerns (Brodbeck et al., 2007; Priem et al., 1995).

The disclosure of incongruity between validity and consensus can also be facilitated

through the collective action of silenced dissenters who have a predisposition to speak up and

engage in institutional change efforts. Research has found that a previously silenced yet une-

quivocally committed minority of actors can tip a reference group into a new state, in which

other group members update their validity beliefs and adapt their propriety beliefs as a result

(Centola et al., 2018). Importantly, this dynamic can facilitate the abandonment of socially

harmful yet deeply institutionalized practices, such as female genital mutilation (Efferson et al.,

2020), foot binding (Mackie, 1996), and smoking (Christakis and Fowler, 2008). The knowledge

that a minority of silenced dissenters can instigate institutional change can also be used strategi-

cally, which is lucidly exemplified by Canales (2016): Only when a government agency identi-

fied silenced dissenters and coordinated informal meetings was the apparent (but false) support

for the status quo revealed and eventually disrupted. In this view, successful collective action in

the form of institutional entrepreneurship or institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006)

does not necessarily require the creation and dissemination of novel viewpoints or a fundamental

shift in prevalent frames, narratives, or discourses. Rather, change can be prompted by reveal-

ing, organizing, and bringing to the fore hidden or suppressed consent, thereby objectifying the

desirability and feasibility of an alternative status quo (Berger and Luckmann, 1967).

Implications for Theories of Institutional Change

The distinction between validity and consensus highlights that institutional change does

not necessarily need to begin with evaluators changing their individual propriety beliefs, as pre-

viously theorized by Tost (2011) and implied by several influential works that have mobilized

the concept of legitimation/delegitimation to explain institutional change (e.g., Greenwood et al.,

2002; Maguire and Hardy, 2009; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Rather, institutional change

may be instigated by evaluators interacting with other evaluators to update their perceptions of

consensus and eventually change their behavior on that basis. That is, because validity as an

institutionalized perception is “not uniformly taken for granted” (Dacin et al., 2002, p. 45; em-

phasis added), de/legitimation may occur when evaluators develop a more accurate assessment

regarding the distribution of propriety beliefs among other evaluators in their reference group

(see Figure 1). If evaluators discern that at least some evaluators share their concerns regarding a

legitimacy object that they hitherto had perceived as valid, they are more likely to voice their

silenced propriety beliefs and to challenge the previously valid but now increasingly contested

legitimacy object. In contrast, in a context where evaluators privately endorse a legitimacy ob-

ject but had silenced their beliefs because they perceived a lack of validity, evaluators are more

likely to voice and enact their favorable propriety beliefs when they learn that certain other eval-

uators hold similar views. For instance, the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency has

led some U.S. citizens to voice more openly their dissent with the political establishment, pre-

sumably because Trump’s campaign and victory revealed that a significant share of the elec-

torate hold similar critical opinions regarding “political correctness” (Hahl et al., 2018).

As demonstrated by research on threshold models of collective behavior (Granovetter,

1978; Kuran, 1995) and social influence (Bonardi and Keim, 2005; Watts and Dodds, 2009), it

might suffice for a small group, or even a single evaluator, to reveal their deviating propriety

beliefs, either through communication or overt action, to meet the threshold level at which other

evaluators are willing to disclose their previously silenced beliefs. Gaining increased confidence

from the support of others, these other evaluators will be more likely to deviate from what they

perceive to be the norm (Schilke, 2018) and express their previously suppressed propriety be-

liefs publicly. This, in turn may contribute to further eroding the validity of the status quo while

at the same time supporting the legitimation of a novel or alternative institutional order. This

dynamic may generate a judgment cascade or “spiral of empowerment” (Lee and Chun, 2016),

in which evaluators increasingly follow the disclosures of other evaluators until a majority of

evaluators have disclosed their propriety beliefs. Eventually, these dynamics allow evaluators to

discern the actual (dis)approval of a presumably (in)valid legitimacy object. Such cascade dy-

namics are exemplified by the self-immolation of a provincial fruit vendor in Tunisia and the

ensuing discussion of this event on social media which revealed widespread private opposition

to a seemingly valid regime, igniting an information cascade and the “revolutionary bandwagon”

of the Arab Spring (Goodwin, 2011, p. 453).

In addition, as indicated in Figure 2 (T2), evaluators who had favorably assessed the le-

gitimacy object’s propriety prior to a judgment cascade will be exposed to the erosion of the

once-dominant validity assessment. They will recognize that the apparently broad-based consen-

sus was merely presumed rather than real. This realization may lead these previously supportive

evaluators to reassess and update their propriety beliefs, and act on that basis (Tost, 2011). In-

deed, exposure to minority opinions can be surprisingly powerful in leading people to change

their views (Wood et al., 1994), even if they had previously been advocates of the majority opin-

ion. For that reason, the greater public visibility of formerly silenced judgments can influence

the propriety beliefs and behaviors of evaluators who previously endorsed the now increasingly

invalidated legitimacy object. The insight that the disclosure of silenced propriety beliefs can

trigger cascade dynamics has also important implications for policy. In order to devise effective

interventions (e.g., aimed at deinstitutionalizing a harmful practice), policy makers need to take

into account not only the distribution of propriety beliefs but also how threshold levels at which

evaluators start disclosing their beliefs are distributed in a community of evaluators and to figure

both direct and indirect effects of legitimacy judgment cascades into their interventions (see Ef-

ferson et al., 2020).

To conclude, the distinction between propriety, validity, and consensus as well as our

discussion of the role of social influence and coercion in legitimacy judgment formation offers a

new window into understanding the legitimacy dynamics that precede institutional change.

Whereas previous models of institutional change have often used individuals changing their

propriety beliefs, either in response to exogenous shocks, institutional contradictions or individ-

uals’ reflexivity, as their starting point (Greenwood et al., 2002; Tost, 2011), our account theo-

rizes institutional change being triggered by resolved misconceptions regarding the pattern of

other evaluators’ beliefs. Acknowledging that validity and behavioral conformity may conceal

private dissent and that macro-level legitimacy may be inherently fragile thus offers a crucial

insight to legitimacy theory, which thus far has treated validity and consensus as essentially syn-

onymous. Given that theoretical and methodological developments are inherently intertwined

(Greenwald, 2012), our theoretical considerations have important implications for empirical

research, a point we elaborate next.

ADVANCING LEGITIMACY RESEARCH WITH EXPERIMENTS

Haack and colleagues (2020a) suggested that the trajectory of institutional research can be

interpreted as the result of theory-method co-evolution (Greenwald, 2012), with the advance-

ment of the field depending on a self-enforcing and continuous cycle between theory develop-

ment and empirical research aimed at testing and consolidating new theory. In this view, the

development of appropriate research designs and measurement approaches is crucial for the ad-

vancement of legitimacy theory. Having established the key conceptual distinction between

three components of legitimacy, a second important goal of our paper is hence to offer some

guidance for future empirical research that elucidates the intricate relationships between

propriety, validity, and consensus, particularly with respect to the antecedents and consequences

of the incongruity between validity and consensus. We believe that conventional methodologies

may not be well-equipped to disentangle distinct legitimacy components and their complex

interactions. Traditionally, legitimacy has often been approximated through crude indirect

measures such as population density or number of adoptions.v However, not only are such prox-

ies problematic because they leave open alternative explanations unrelated to legitimacy, but

more specifically, they are often unable to capture individual evaluators’ perceptions. Research

has also relied heavily on correlational designs and text-analytical approaches which tend to be

inadequate for developing a theory of the inter-subjective and socio-cognitive processes that

underlie legitimacy (Haack, 2012). As a result, extant research and measurement approaches

cannot effectively differentiate between the legitimacy components and the intricate relation-

ships between these components, and they are of limited utility in explaining or predicting the

occurrence of unanticipated institutional change.

As a solution to this problem, we encourage researchers to embrace experimental designs

more frequently while employing appropriate individual-level measures for legitimacy such as

those that clearly distinguish between propriety and validity beliefs as suggested by Haack and

Sieweke (2020). Given their unique ability to identify cognitive processes at the individual level

that would be difficult to study with other methods, experiments offer a highly attractive ap-

proach to rigorously and consistently studying the relationships between propriety, validity, and

consensus and their relevance in the context of institutional change (Schilke et al., 2019). Espe-

cially when investigating socially endogenous inferences (where evaluators consider the opinion

of other evaluators when forming their own judgments), experiments offer the important ad-

vantage of ruling out alternative explanations and isolating factors of theoretical interest, as

demonstrated by experimental research in sociology (e.g., Correll et al., 2017; Schilke and

Rossman, 2018), psychology (e.g., Paluck and Shepherd, 2012; Zou et al., 2009), and behavioral

economics (e.g., Allcott, 2011; Hallsworth et al., 2017). We thus believe the time is ripe to bring

experiments to the core of legitimacy research in organization theory.

In social science research, the term “experiment” refers to the random assignment of units

of analysis (typically human participants) to different groups (e.g., Shadish et al., 2002). Given

that groups vary only with respect to the manipulated variable (the “treatment variable”),

changes in the outcome variable can be attributed to the manipulation. Experiments have a

number of important advantages (Bitektine et al., 2018; Stone-Romero, 2009); namely, they

enable causal inference, they allow the researcher to control for the influence of external

variables, and they help the researcher explore the parameters of complex constructs. It may thus

not be surprising that we are currently witnessing a significant increase in experimental research,

particularly in institutional theory (Bitektine et al., 2018). Following up on Zucker’s (1977)

early experimental work studying the effects of institutionalization on cultural persistence, more

recent experimental investigations have demonstrated the rapid institutionalization of price

bubbles (Levine et al., 2014), experimentally manipulated institutional complexity (Raaijmakers

et al., 2015), institutionalized belief systems (Hafenbrädl and Waeger, 2017), political ideologies

(Jasinenko et al., 2020), and various types of institutional logics (Glaser et al., 2016). Recent

investigations have also tested the effects of organizational identity on resistance to institutional

pressures (Schilke, 2018). However, with the exception of the landmark study by Elsbach (1994)

and a recent investigation by Jahn and colleagues (2020), organization and management scholars

have yet to embrace experimental designs in legitimacy research.

We see an opportunity for “retooling” and an untapped potential to capitalize on

experiments to improve the understanding of legitimacy that we advance in this paper—as a

multi-level process comprising distinct legitimacy components. In this section, we offer three

separate yet interrelated experimental designs, all of which seek to examine the interactions

among propriety, validity, and consensus and to improve our knowledge of the inter-subjective

processes of perception, interpretation, and interactions that establish the core of a multi-level

understanding of legitimacy. All three designs are specifically geared towards developing a

better understanding of the role of consensus in the legitimacy processes preceding institutional

change. While we can only sketch selected aspects of these designs, we are hopeful that even a

rough outline can inspire legitimacy researchers to pursue these or similar approaches in the near

future, in an effort to help build strong and relevant theory.

To ensure that the internal validity of experimental research is not threatened we

recommend unexperienced experimentalists to study best-practice suggestions for experimental

methods (e.g. Aguinis and Bradley, 2014; Lonati et al., 2018). We also suggest that researchers

develop a thorough understanding of the role of deception in experimental research. Given that

our theory focuses on the antecedents and consequences of collective misperceptions and the

role of communication in the formation and dissolution of these misperceptions, deception may

be a useful or even necessary element in future experimental work on legitimacy. However,

there are stark differences between psychological and economic research traditions with respect

to the acceptability of deception. While psychologists and sociologists tend to see deception as a

legitimate tool in experimentation whenever it would be practically impossible to run a study

without (Cook and Yamagishi, 2008; Smith and Richardson, 1983), laboratories in behavioral

economics enforce bans on deceiving subjects and there is a strong professional norm among

economists that employing deception in experiments is unethical, making them de facto

unpublishable (Dickson, 2011). Experimental procedures involving deception in economics-

oriented schools and programs thus may require a convincing justification for approval by ethics

committees.

Survey Design

The first suggested approach consists of a set of survey experiments to examine the effect

of perceived validity and consensus on propriety beliefs. This design builds on and extends

previous works in sociology that have focused on the relationship between validity and propriety

(e.g., Johnson et al., 2016; Massey et al., 1997; Walker et al., 1988). Survey experiments embed

the experimental manipulation within a conventional survey, through which researchers may

also gather individual-level characteristics of participants for use as additional predictor

variables in the data analysis. Survey experiments combine some of the benefits of surveys with

those of experiments: they have a high degree of internal validity because the experimental

element allows researchers to randomize assignment to conditions and control variables of

interest. At the same time, survey experiments can also have a high degree of external validity

because the use of web platforms and vignettes (such as realistic news stories invented

specifically for the purposes of the experiment) increase the similarity between the experimental

situation and everyday experiences (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014; Finch, 1987).

Based on the theoretical notions developed above, we posit that the formation of propriety

beliefs regarding a legitimacy object is contingent on both the perceived validity of that object

and the degree to which it is consensually regarded as appropriate for its social context.

Specifically, it can be assumed that propriety beliefs are likely to be revised and also disclosed

in contexts characterized by high validity and low consensus, because a lack of consensus casts

doubt on whether legitimacy objects perceived as valid represent an objective and collectively

approved fact (for a related argument in a field setting, see Haack et al., 2020b).

Based on this reasoning, we suggest that scholars could conduct survey experiments to test

the causal relationships between validity, consensus, and propriety. A first type of study could

employ a 2 (validity: high vs. low) ×2 (consensus: high vs. low) between-subjects design, in

which the experimenter randomly assigns participants to a condition and presents one of four

versions of a vignette about the focal legitimacy object. Validity and consensus could both be

manipulated in the vignette. A major source of validity is authorization by high-status actors,

granting a legitimacy object the status of a social fact (Johnson et al., 2006). Consensus, on the

other hand, indicates that evaluators within a given reference group agree that a legitimacy

object is appropriate for its social context. The vignette could thus indicate (1) that a legitimacy

object is either supported or criticized by an important authority (validity manipulation) and (2)

that the relevant reference group is either characterized by significant agreement or

disagreement with regard to the appropriateness of the focal legitimacy object (consensus

manipulation). For instance, the “high validity/low consensus” condition would highlight that

although a legitimacy object is strongly supported by an authority (and is thus high on validity),

social approval is not unanimous and significant dissent exists among other evaluators regarding

the acceptability of the legitimacy object. The manipulation of consensus could be implemented

graphically through the display of differently shaped opinion distributions, not unlike those

shown in Figure 1 above. For instance, a single-peaked distribution with low variance would

represent a high-consensus condition, whereas a double-peaked distribution with the same mean

value but much higher variance would represent a low-consensus condition (e.g., Reimann et al.,

2016, p. 1461).

In line with prior research in sociology (e.g., Hegtvedt and Johnson, 2000; Schilke and

Rossman, 2018; Walker et al., 1988), we expect that validity strengthens propriety (bolstering

effect) and reduces or even neutralizes perceptions of impropriety (canceling effect). The two

effects need to be separated, as previous research has suggested that propriety (and legitimacy

more generally) can be conceptualized as a bipolar construct, meaning that it ranges from

positive propriety to negative propriety (impropriety) (Hudson, 2008; Suddaby et al., 2017).

Consistent with the work of Haack and colleagues (2020b), we expect these effects to be

stronger within high-consensus conditions, as participants are more likely to follow their validity

beliefs (i.e., their beliefs about what others believe) and to hide their propriety beliefs in these

contexts. That is, if an evaluator holds unfavorable propriety beliefs about a valid legitimacy

object (e.g., a hierarchical system or status order) and also knows that this object is unanimously

approved (i.e., consensus is high), that evaluator will be less likely to voice unfavorable

propriety beliefs and more likely to adapt his or her propriety beliefs over time (strong canceling

effect). Meanwhile, if an evaluator holds a propriety belief that is consistent with the level of

perceived validity, a high-consensus condition will further strengthen the evaluator’s propriety

belief, and he or she will be more likely to voice the judgment openly (bolstering effect).

Finally, under conditions of low consensus, we expect that participants will pay less attention to

validity and be more likely to reveal what they personally consider appropriate.

Deliberation Design

A second, and particularly promising, opportunity to advance knowledge of the role of

consensus in the legitimacy processes preceding institutional change is to draw on the

experimental study of deliberations to examine whether and how communication may alter the

dynamics underlying the interactions among propriety, validity, and consensus. Deliberation can

be defined as “mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences,

values and interests regarding matters of common concern” (Mansbridge, 2015, p. 27).

Importantly, deliberation designs have the advantage of combining the “internal validity

provided by experimental design, the external validity provided by actual deliberation about

real-world issues, and the generalizability provided by surveys” (Carpini et al., 2004, p. 333).

Suddaby and colleagues (2017) further stressed that deliberation settings allow for the

identification of supra-individual aspects of cognition, and thus help addressing the issue of how

everyday practices and conversations create intersubjectively shared typifications for a given

reference group (DiMaggio, 1997). Deliberation designs therefore facilitate the empirical

investigation of the negotiations and struggles underlying both the production of validity and the

silencing of propriety beliefs in processes of (de-)legitimation (Suddaby et al., 2017).

Specifically, future research could elaborate the conditions under which deliberation helps

to reveal vs. perpetuate a non-disclosed incongruity between validity and consensus. That is,

what are the factors and circumstances through which deliberation objectifies validity beliefs

about a legitimacy object (constituting validity) while silencing inconsistent propriety beliefs

(lowering perceived consensus)? Conversely, scholars could aim to identify the conditions under

which deliberation deobjectifies validity beliefs (constituting invalidity) and contributes to the

disclosure of incongruities and silenced propriety beliefs (raising perceived dissensus).vi

The starting point of a research agenda premised on deliberation designs is the insight

developed in this paper that validity often involves the appearance of consensus rather than

actual consensus. While apparent consensus may mirror actual consensus with relative accuracy,

it is important to point out that a legitimacy object can be valid and objectified, and thus can

induce a sense of obligation that guides behavior, when its acceptance is “assumedly shared” by

others in a social group (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). As discussed above, validity can thus be based

on “false consensus,” or a misperception of the propriety beliefs prevalent within a reference

group. Even if the majority of evaluators hold unfavorable propriety beliefs about a legitimacy

object (meaning only a few evaluators privately endorse it), this object can still be perceived as

highly valid if these evaluators falsely assume that most evaluators in their group believe that

this object is proper. The belief in the validity of a legitimacy object can thus exist as a social

fact and can guide behavior even in the presence of weak consensus. As discussed in greater

detail above, this kind of misperception is more likely to occur when the ties among the

members of a group are weak and trustful communication is sparse, which makes it difficult for

individual evaluators to detect the actual or “true” beliefs of others. In turn, denser network ties

and the possibility of communicating openly with group members in public deliberation can

reveal that validity is based on an illusion of support, making it more likely that evaluators will

disclose their actual propriety beliefs, leading to the deobjectification of validity.

There are manifold opportunities to further examine dynamics of (de)objectification in the

controlled setting of a deliberation experiment. For instance, researchers could draw on a design

developed by Schnider and colleagues (2020) and measure the impact of communication on

changes in propriety beliefs by employing a difference-in-differences design, where treatments

vary with respect to the degree of validity (e.g., through expert endorsements). In such a design,

within-subjects differences in propriety measures would be surveyed before and after

discussions and compared between the treatment and control conditions. In the treatment

condition, participants would discuss the focal legitimacy object (e.g., a controversial

organizational practice) with experts (constituting the source of validity), while in the control

condition participants would discuss the focal legitimacy object amongst themselves without

experts. To ensure that the endorsement or critique of the focal legitimacy object follows a

predefined script in group discussions, the researcher could hire professional actors and employ

standardized scripts, which would control for variance in idiosyncratic characteristics, such as

attractiveness or persuasiveness (e.g., Jacquart and Antonakis, 2015). If executed well, the

involvement of scripted actors may not comprise mundane realism while contributing to the

experience of the deliberation as an authentic and natural interaction for all participants. In

addition, participants would receive a standardized welcome address, which introduces the topic

to be discussed, invites them to make an effort to justify propositions and considerations, and

emphasizes the importance of mutual listening (Baccaro et al., 2016). Another opportunity to

study the dynamics of (de)objectification is the manipulation of group consensus. In this type of

design, researchers could assemble the deliberation groups based on pre-tested propriety beliefs

to match a specific propriety belief distribution (see Figure 1). This design embraces the

complexity of the variety of real-world propriety distributions and could help understand which

propriety distributions bolster or harm the silencing effect of validity. All deliberations should

be mediated by trained moderators. These would lead the discussion as an essentially free

conversation among the participants, whereby they manage the time, open and close the

discussion, and make sure that no single participant either dominates the conversation or refrains

from talking entirely.vii Deliberations could be videotaped and coded for relevant behavioral

patterns and interaction dynamics to triangulate self-reported information.

Storytelling Design

Finally, another promising approach is to examine whether validity, propriety and

consensus influence how and why some stories develop and persist over time while others fall

out of favor. Storytelling adds an important temporal element to the legitimacy research

described above and shifts the focus to the stories actors construct to make sense of controversial

legitimacy objects or issues. Further, storytelling is a key way in which cultural and institutional

knowledge is transmitted over time (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001). Stories are passed down from

parents to children, from managers to new employees, and from newspapers to the public.

Stories are therefore among the most powerful mechanisms for creating and maintaining

legitimacy. While stories often are preserved as they are passed from person to person, they can

also change. We suggest dynamics of storytelling are particularly important in contentious and

complex contexts, such as those surrounding a controversial legitimacy object, where the stories

people choose to tell may help determine the momentum and eventual outcome of critical

decisions.

Here, we propose a set of laboratory experiments that are based on serial reproduction

research in cultural psychology (Clark and Kashima, 2007; Lyons and Kashima, 2003). In this

design, which is sometimes called “the telephone game,” participants receive information and

are asked to then share that information in their own words with another person, in a chain of

four people. We recommend this design to examine the conditions under which participants

either seek to reproduce a dominant story about the focal legitimacy object (Story A) or seek to

introduce changes to this story given the existence of a competing story (Story B). Our baseline

argument is that participants will, in general, tend to reproduce Story A whenever validity and

propriety pressures exist. However, participants will be likely to introduce changes to this story

under a specific combination of conditions. Specifically, when participants perceive that Story A

will likely be rejected by their group (i.e., validity for story A is perceived to be weak) and they

themselves hold discrepant beliefs (i.e., unfavorable propriety beliefs) with regard to Story A,

they will be more likely to introduce new information from Story B into their overall

communications. What this suggests is that a story’s reproducibility is driven primarily by a

belief that the collective will buy into the veracity of this story and, even when this is not the

case, by the personal belief that this story is true. Only when these conditions do not hold will

stories change.

In this type of serial reproduction experiment, participants would receive some infor-

mation about the focal legitimacy object through Story A, followed by information about wheth-

er or not the participant with whom they will be communicating will endorse this story (validity

belief manipulation: peer endorsement vs. peer rejection). Participants would be surveyed to

gauge their personal level of endorsement (propriety belief measure). They then would be given

a newspaper article that offers equivalent information about Story A and Story B. The experi-

menter would then ask the participant to write a summary of this news article for the next person

to read. The core outcome measure would be the amount of Story-A-consistent information in

relation to the amount of Story-B-consistent information provided in the participants’ written

summaries. Our expectation is that the only time where the amount of Story B information

would increase relative to Story A information is when a participant believes that the participant

he or she is communicating with will not endorse Story A and when this participant himself or

herself also has a lower level of endorsement for Story A.

We suggest including four participants in each reproduction chain. To control for order ef-

fects, a second set of four participants would start with Story B (counterbalancing). Thus, this

study would employ a 2 (validity: low vs. high) × 2 (sequence: starting with A vs. B) between-

subjects design with three measurement points (the stories of participants 2, 3, and 4). To ensure

variance in propriety beliefs, the researcher could pre-select participants to ensure that the sub-

ject pool is diverse in terms of propriety beliefs about a certain story (i.e., recruiting an equal

number of individuals holding either favorable or unfavorable propriety beliefs). This would

make it possible to build ideal-typical chains (a “supportive” chain comprising individuals with

favorable propriety beliefs vs. a “critical” chain comprising individuals with unfavorable propri-

ety beliefs). Varying the composition of chains (“supportive” vs. “critical”) would allow manip-

ulating the construct of consensus (i.e., the actual agreement that exists within a reproduction

chain). As a “supportive” chain resembles the notion of echo chambers discussed in social media

research, study results may generate insights about political polarization and ways to overcome

it. Moreover, research drawing on this kind of storytelling design has important practical

implications regarding the way governments, media, and the public create spaces in which

people feel safe to express discrepant beliefs about controversial issues.

Measurement

Propriety beliefs could be measured using a pre-tested and validated item battery (e.g.,

Alexiou and Wiggins, 2019). However, given that evaluators may silence their propriety beliefs

when they perceive them to be inconsistent with validity, measurement instruments based on

self-reports may, due to social desirability effects, capture only validity beliefs (Haack and

Sieweke, 2020). While the attention to validity beliefs is not a methodological artifact but much

in line with what we would expect theoretically, the question arises how scholars can measure

silenced propriety beliefs. Indirect or “implicit” measures of propriety beliefs, including tech-

niques such as the implicit association test and evaluative priming, may complement “explicit”

self-report measures (see, e.g., Humphreys and Latour, 2013). In addition, conjoint analysis can

help reduce the social desirability and retrospective reporting biases sometimes associated with

explicit measures (Siraz et al., 2020). Besides explicit and implicit measures of propriety,

scholars may also consider integrating a behavioral correlate—for example, by asking

participants about their willingness to make a donation to the focal legitimacy object or a

specific cause related to the legitimacy object (Haack and Sieweke, 2020). Indeed, even though

legitimacy research suggests a direct link between legitimacy judgments and behavior, it has

rarely tested this link in the controlled setting of an experiment (Gruban and Légeret, 2020).

DISCUSSION

Contributions

This article paired theory development with methodological recommendations to make

two important contributions to legitimacy research. First, we delineated three distinct legitimacy

components—propriety, validity, and consensus—that operate at different yet highly interde-

pendent levels of analysis—micro, macro, and meso—and explained why future research on

legitimacy should be structured around these three components. While propriety and validity

have received growing attention in legitimacy research (e.g., Bitektine and Haack, 2015; Tost,

2011), the meaning and role of consensus has oftentimes been ignored or treated only tangential-

ly. In fact, legitimacy scholars have often conflated the concepts of validity and consensus and

failed to define and differentiate the latter. To address this problem, we clarified that validity

denotes an institutionalized, collective-level perception of appropriateness for a given social

context, whereas consensus is a meso-level construct that describes the degree of agreement in

evaluators’ propriety beliefs. Separating validity from consensus therefore offers a crucial cor-

rection to earlier work (e.g., Bitektine and Haack 2015) that erroneously implied that validity

and consensus reflect one and the same construct.

Our clarification advances the multi-level conception of legitimacy and has important im-

plications for theories of institutional change. Specifically, whereas much prior research has

portrayed validity as virtually impervious to change, our theory highlights that validity and the

taken-for-granted aspects of institutions can be inherently fragile whenever consensus is low.

Such low consensus may oftentimes not be apparent, because evaluators have little reason to

openly voice propriety beliefs that are not congruent with a legitimacy object’s validity. Howev-

er, trustful communication among evaluators and collective action may make low consensus

visible and reveal the prevalence of dissent, with the result that evaluators who hold minority

opinions will be more likely to publicly disclose their propriety beliefs. In turn, the disclosure of

the once concealed propriety beliefs will affect the judgments and behavioral dispositions of

other evaluators. As illustrated in Figure 2, these dynamics may lead to a judgment cascade that

prompts the problematization, delegitimation, and ultimately, the decline of a previously valid

legitimacy object. At the same time, delegitimation may give room to the legitimation of an al-

ternative institutional order, contributing to the process of institutional change. Importantly, our

research clarifies that institutional change does not necessarily start with intra-individual change

in propriety beliefs, as has often been implied in extant scholarship (e.g., Greenwood et al.,

2002; Tost, 2011). Institutional change can also be instigated when evaluators become able to

gauge how propriety beliefs are distributed in their reference group and to identify a critical mass

of like-minded evaluators who are willing to disclose their dissenting beliefs and engage in institu-

tional change efforts. Importantly, this account offers a viable approach to addressing the contest-

ed issue of embedded agency by explaining why individual actors are capable of stepping out of

the current institutional order (Cardinale, 2018; Harmon et al., 2019).

Second, our paper draws attention to the need to broaden the methodological toolkit to ad-

vance empirical research on the perceptual components of legitimacy. Experimental designs

allow researchers in institutional theory to approach legitimacy in a new way—as a process of

social judgment formation that is subject to the evolving cognitions of, and pressures on, the

human evaluator, rather than merely as a fixed characteristic or asset of organizations that con-

tributes to organizational growth and survival (Deephouse and Suchman, 2008). We maintain

that an experimental research program will help examine legitimacy as an explanandum and

phenomenon in its own right, specify and test its causal determinants, corroborate (or refute) the

assumptions on which much of the multi-level research on legitimacy is based, and ultimately

empower researchers to advance their understanding of micro-institutional processes (Zucker,

1991, p. 104; also see Zucker and Schilke, 2020).

Experiments: The Promise and the Challenge

Experiments constitute a powerful means of establishing causal inferences and are often

considered the “gold standard” of science (Coleman, 1990). However, in private conversations

with colleagues, we frequently sense a concern that experiments may reinforce empiricism and a

positivist epistemology that emphasizes the existence of an objective and measurable reality, in

contrast to an interpretive epistemology, which postulates that knowledge derives from the sub-

jective interpretation of reality (Morgan and Smircich, 1980). Our view, however, is that exper-

iments that are carefully designed and interpreted are capable of supporting a holistic and more

sophisticated view that acknowledges the inherently contextual foundation of human cognition

and behavior (DiMaggio, 1997). In this sense, experiments have significant potential to

strengthen the social-constructionist roots of institutional theory, reinvigorating and extending

earlier works of Zucker (1977), Garfinkel (1967), and others.

Although we are not the first to encourage the greater use of experimental designs in insti-

tutional research, implementing such a research agenda has remained challenging. A major dif-

ficulty may stem from a lack of familiarity with relevant experimental methods in the organiza-

tion theory community. As David and Bitektine (2009) argued, institutional researchers may

need training in experimental designs, which may require them to collaborate with colleagues

from disciplines such as marketing, psychology, and organizational behavior. Indeed, engaging

in more intense dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration could prove highly fruitful in that it

would help scholars integrate sociological and psychological perspectives of institutional phe-

nomena (DiMaggio, 1997; Zerubavel, 1997; Zucker and Schilke, 2020). This also means that

legitimacy researchers need to overcome old habits, look beyond short-term incentive structures,

and make a deliberate effort to gain experience in experimental methods (Haack et al., 2020a).

In the words of Bitektine (2009), scholars have to evolve from “method specialists”—that is,

researchers who are constrained by a narrow set of methods—into “domain specialists”—that is,

researchers who apply “more diverse, but sometimes less ‘legitimate’ (and therefore more

‘risky’) research methods to address research questions that cannot be explored through ‘more

legitimate’ methods” (Bitektine, 2009, p. 219).

Another potential obstacle to establishing an experimental research agenda is that the ap-

plication of experiments requires variables of interest, and clearly specified causal relationships

among these variables, that are suitable for standardized operationalization and external control

(McKinley, 2007). This means that legitimacy scholars need to clarify and refine the definitions

of key constructs and identify the scope conditions under which the proposed effects are likely

to hold (Suddaby, 2010). By drawing on Suchman (1995), legitimacy scholars have regularly

defined legitimacy rather broadly, and, possibly as a result, the construct has been measured in a

variety of ways that have contributed to increasing the range of meanings associated with it.

Closely following Suchman’s (1995) encompassing definition may have been detrimental to the

advancement of legitimacy theory and perhaps institutional theory as a whole. To reach a better

understanding of legitimacy in institutional theory, researchers need to specify more precisely

the perceptual components of legitimacy and their relationships. In Hirsch and Levin’s (1999)

words, we believe the time is ripe in the evolution of legitimacy research for umbrella advocates

to give way (at least in part) to validity police in order to avoid a construct collapse. Enhancing

construct clarity (rigor) will be also instrumental to have a meaningful impact on practice (rele-

vance), as a multi-level theory of legitimacy with a clear differentiation of its perceptual compo-

nents brings us closer to the reality and complexity of legitimacy dynamics within and about

organizations (Haack et al., 2020a).

Future Research and Implications for Related Literatures

We see ample opportunities to advance our understanding of legitimacy by drawing on the

context of social media. The rise of social media as a heterogeneous and co-produced environ-

ment changes how social judgments about organizations are produced and disseminated (Etter et

al., 2019) and can provide important insights into cascade dynamics underlying sudden and un-

anticipated institutional change. For instance, tracking the emergence and spread of new Twitter

hashtags may help flag abrupt institutional change so clearly that they make excellent classroom

examples, and can also provide visible evidence of cascades that reinforce legitimacy, destroy it,

or create something new. Sometimes the Twitter sequences include, as part of the message

stream, the older content that is being replaced, and associate it with relevant Twitter actors.

Here, tracks of related messages can expose otherwise hidden pervasive behavior that is seen by

one subset of actors as illegitimate, and as costly to change by another, such as repeated predato-

ry sexual behavior in the movie and photography industries. The speed of change in response to

these Twitter revelations, when confirmed by multiple high-status actors, lies visible for all to

see. From recounting personal experiences to later court cases, the mechanisms for institutional

change are laid out and can be subjected to research. YouTube and news organizations often

produce similar streams of delegitimation processes at work.

Similarly, mechanisms that maintain or reinforce different forms of sexism, ethnic target-

ing, and racism can be exposed, studied, and alternatives producing positive, ameliorating

changes identified. For Zucker (2019), this visibility of action helped her to informally test her

idea that legitimacy, and the related institutional order, can undergo sudden redefinition (see also

Zucker and Darby, 2020). From one day to the next, what was accepted with only secret, veiled

comment becomes part of a pressure campaign that leads to firing, company bankruptcy, court

cases and prison sentences. The cascade of revealed and documented actions, unknown when

previously concealed, is successfully defined as illegitimate, and that redefinition quickly pro-

duces real effects. While it might be possible to design a quasi-experiment using data from Twit-

ter, YouTube or newspapers for research purposes, the control of true experiments as we outline

them in the section above is invaluable at this stage of theoretical development. After legitimacy

scholars identify the relevant causal chains via experiments, other exploration as above would

help establish the range of conditions under which these processes take place outside of the lab.

Diving back into the lab for confirmation at the end might become second nature to most re-

searchers.

While our article primarily contributes to the literature on legitimacy and institutional

change, its insights into the concept of consensus are likely to be relevant for several adjacent

literatures. In fact, the general notion of consensus is not unique to the study of legitimacy, but

may be of great importance whenever certain perceptions can be collectively held among mem-

bers of an entity (Bowman and Ambrosini, 1997). Hence, our theorizing has the potential to con-

tribute to research on related types of social evaluation, such as corporate reputation (Lange et

al., 2011), status (Piazza and Castellucci, 2014), or stigma (Devers et al., 2009). Scholars have

often treated these types of evaluations as collective-level constructs that reflect public recogni-

tion and social approval, and are just beginning to examine the role of individual-level judg-

ments in the process through which an organization’s collective-level approval forms and

changes (Haack and Sieweke, 2020).

Perhaps most notably, scholars interested in trust have started to theorize the role of con-

sensus in the context of studying trust dynamics (Brattström et al., 2019; Schilke and Cook,

2013). One key finding from that literature is that substantial dissensus may exist whenever mul-

tiple actors form trust perceptions of a particular target, with some placing considerably higher

trust in it than others (Klein et al., 2000). The mechanisms explaining such variations in consen-

sus among individual trustors, as well as the consequences of trust consensus, are at the forefront

of this inquiry (de Jong et al., 2017; 2020). While our article shares an interest in these topics, it

introduces important novel aspects of consensus that have yet to be considered by trust scholars

and that could aid in developing a more nuanced understanding of how consensus may shape

trust dynamics. For example, extant trust scholarship mostly assumes that actors either have

knowledge of others’ trust perceptions or they do not, but the possibility and implications of

false impressions of others’ trust perceptions have not yet been examined, even though trust

misperceptions are likely to exist widely (Campagna et al., forthcoming). Our theorizing about

validity-consensus congruity may offer a useful starting point. Further, while our discussion of

Figure 1 emphasizes the need to move beyond average consensus levels, how trust beliefs are

distributed and whether distinct distributions may have unique consequences has not yet been

addressed by trust scholars (see de Jong et al., 2020 for a recent exception).

CONCLUSION

In this article, we illuminated the complex relationships between the propriety, validity,

and consensus components of legitimacy and highlighted that disentangling validity from con-

sensus allows for improved theorizing of the legitimacy processes that precede sudden and unan-

ticipated institutional change. We believe that future research on legitimacy needs to be struc-

tured around these three components in order to move forward. Our proposal of conceiving

legitimacy as a multi-level process and the elaboration of relevant experimental designs to study

this process aims to contribute to such an ambitious research agenda. Our suggestions, which are

meant to offer both programmatic and pragmatic advice, thus represent only the beginning of a

long journey. We would be delighted if you considered joining this effort.

FIGURES

Figure 1: Different distributions of propriety beliefs

Figure 2: Disclosure of incongruity between validity and consensus

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NOTES

i It is important to note that the legitimacy components of propriety, validity, and consensus are distinct from,

and must not be confused with, the “dimensions” of legitimacy. Approaches to conceptualizing the dimensions

of legitimacy range from two-dimensional (e.g., Aldrich and Fiol, 1994; Ruef and Scott, 1998) to three-

dimensional (e.g., Huy et al., 2014; Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011) and four-dimensional (e.g., Walker et al., 2014).

Other studies address issue-specific types of legitimacy, such as corporate environmental legitimacy (Bansal and

Clelland, 2004) or more idiosyncratic conceptions of legitimacy (e.g., Higgins and Gulati, 2006; Human and

Provan, 2000). Each dimension or type of legitimacy can be conceptualized as comprising propriety, validity,

and consensus components.

ii Please note that important aspects of the consensus construct were co-developed in Haack et al., 2020b.

iii Note that consensus can describe the agreement regarding favorable or unfavorable propriety beliefs. By de-

fault, we conceptualize consensus such that it describes the agreement regarding favorable propriety.

iv Systems that are highly institutionalized may breakdown and delegitimate before construction of new systems.

Revolutions, both in government and in science, often share an “act first, legitimate later” character.

v For density measures, see Baum and Powell, 1995; Zucker, 1989; for indirect measures of adoption motivation,

see Donaldson, 1995; Vergne, 2011; for text-based measures, see Etter et al., 2018; Haack, 2012.

vi By “objectification” we refer to the development of an objective and valid external reality that is largely

independent of the subjective internal states of individual evaluators (Berger and Luhmann, 1967; Tolbert and

Zucker, 1996). Conversely, “deobjectification” refers to the development of an objective external reality that is

increasingly subjective and dependent on the private propriety beliefs of evaluators (Wood and McKinley,

2017).

vii A deliberation experiment cannot fully match the internal validity and control of confounders that other

experimental approaches afford. In particular, researchers cannot enforce deliberation on participants: while

some participants may actively participate in deliberations, others may mainly listen without saying much

(“lurkers”). Non-compliance becomes particularly relevant when deliberation effects are not monotonic, i.e.

participants contributing actively to the discussion (“activists”) experience stronger shifts in propriety beliefs

than “lurkers”. Researchers could address this crucial problem in a twofold way: on the one hand, the

involvement of moderators could help to reduce the number of “lurkers” by directly asking them to participate;

on the other hand, the causal effect of validity and consensus in deliberation could be estimated by employing

the so-called Complier Average Causal Effect approach (Angrist et al., 1996).

LET'S DO THE FRACKING TALK: EXPLORING THE SIMULTANEOUS EFFECT OF MULTIPLE CONFLICTING VALIDITY CUES ON EVALUATORS' PROPRIETY JUDGMENTS

Preprint

May 2024

In this study, we draw on the legitimacy-as-perception perspective in organization and management studies (e.g.: Siraz, Claes, De Castro, & Vaara, 2023; Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017; van den Broek, Langley, Ehrenhard, & Groen, 2022) to investigate how evaluators form individual legitimacy judgments (propriety) when exposed to multiple or even conflicting cues in the context of fracking. Previous research on legitimacy establishes it as a multilevel construct in which propriety refers to an individual’s own judgment of the appropriateness of a given legitimacy object, and validity refers to legitimacy at the collective level. Although an inherently collective-level construct, validity finds its way into the appraisal process of individual evaluators and enters their cognition in the form of ‘validity cues. While there has been significant interest in the interaction between validity and propriety (Haack & Sieweke, 2018; Ivanova Ruffo, Mnisri, Morin-Esteves, & Gendron, 2020), as well as in its behavioral correlates, including practice implementation (Jacqueminet & Durand, 2020), protest behavior (Walker, Thomas, & Zelditch Jr, 1986), organizational change (Huy, Corley, & Kraatz, 2014), and institutionalization (Arshed, Chalmers, & Matthews, 2019), an unresolved puzzle in the legitimacy-as-perception perspective is the question of under what conditions a given validity cue gains predominance in the formation of propriety and overrides the influence of other validity cues. As previous work has predominantly examined the impact of a single source of validity (e.g.: Elsbach, 1994; Johnson, Dowd, Ridgeway, Cook, & Massey, 2006; Walker et al., 1986), we know little about how the concurrent presence of multiple and potentially conflicting validity cues from different sources shapes propriety judgment formation. This question is particularly relevant in contested arenas where polarized legitimacy is common (Gond et al., 2016; Scherer et al., 2013; Siraz et al., 2023). In such settings, individual evaluators are confronted with ‘multiple validities’ (Bitektine & Haack, 2015: 59), and a priori it is not clear whether and how engagement with different validity cues affects evaluators’ propriety judgments about a focal subject of legitimacy. Legitimacy subjects are ‘social entities, structures, actions, and ideas whose acceptability are being assessed’ (Deephouse and Suchman, 2008: 54). A central assumption in the literature, namely that legitimacy reflects a relationship between a legitimacy subject and an evaluator (or group of evaluators) who is assessing the subject based on a ‘socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’ (Suchman, 1995: 574), has been largely overlooked in empirical research on legitimacy, and prior works have rarely considered individual-level characteristics when studying the legitimacy process (Haack et al., 2021; Tost, 2011). Considering validity cues concomitantly, however, merely provides a partial understanding of formation of propriety judgments. Evaluators’ personal values are likely to affect how validity cues impact their judgment formation and thus contribute to shaping their propriety judgments (Finch, Deephouse, & Varella, 2015; Schwartz et al., 2012). According to Schwartz’s theory of basic individual values (1994; 2012), values influence evaluations because they serve as ‘guiding principles in the life of a person.’ In addition, values have been shown in numerous studies to influence the way evaluators make up their mind (e.g. Judge & Bretz, 1992; Lamin & Zaheer, 2012). In the context of fracking, evaluators’ environmentalism is particularly relevant (Gond et al., 2016). While scholars have sought to conceptualize the mechanisms and underlying processes of legitimacy judgment formation (Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Tost, 2011), and recent empirical research has progressed toward this goal (e.g. Finch et al., 2015; Haack & Sieweke, 2018), the role of evaluators’ values in judgment formation is yet to be further investigated. Building on the legitimacy-as-perception perspective (e.g., Suddaby et al., 2017) and the literature on environmentalism (e.g.: Dietz, Fitzgerald, & Shwom, 2005), we advance scholarly understanding of propriety judgment formation in a context of multiple and conflicting cues. We carried out full-profile conjoint experiments to investigate how multiple validity cues and evaluators’ values affect judgment formation. Evaluators were systematically exposed to four simultaneous and different cues varying in valence. This resulted in 7,904 propriety judgments nested in 247 individuals. Given the complex nature of propriety judgment formation involving multiple cues and evaluators’ personal values, empirical research in this area is difficult to conduct. By conducting conjoint analysis, we were able to capture how different validity cues are simultaneously used in propriety judgment formation and further investigate the effects of evaluators’ environmentalism. Moreover, the method allowed us to present various combinations of favorable and/or unfavorable cues to avoid biasing evaluators with a particular cue order or cue valence (Lohrke, Holloway, & Woolley, 2010; Shepherd, Patzelt, & Baron, 2013). Evaluators could thus assess multiple and conflicting cues. We make three contributions to the literature. First, this study contributes to the legitimacy-as-perception perspective by investigating how, and to what extent, different validity cues shape propriety. Our findings underscore the need to recognize that propriety is formed by concomitant interpretation of a bundle of validity cues, and they highlight that considering cues separately may lead to inaccurate conclusions about the impact of specific cues. This insight is particularly important given the increasing complexity and dynamism of the environment in which legitimacy subjects and evaluators are embedded. Second, we demonstrate that both validity cues and evaluators’ personal values play a significant role in propriety judgment formation. The concomitant consideration of both validity cues and values allows us to develop a holistic understanding of the judgment formation process. Our model illustrates how evaluators’ values change the weight that they attribute to different validity cues, thereby affecting their propriety judgments. This is a critical observation, because it underscores the importance for legitimacy subjects to consider evaluators’ values in the context in which they operate. Moreover, prior literature suggests that evaluators attenuate propriety judgments that are inconsistent with the perceived validity because they fear social sanctions (Bitektine and Haack, 2015), yet our findings show that attenuation also occurs when the expression of propriety judgments remains anonymous and without the risk of social sanctions. Finally, using a series of full-profile conjoint experiments allows us to investigate real-time propriety judgment formation in a context of multiple consistent and conflicting validity cues. This approach opens additional research opportunities for the legitimacy-as-perception perspective and social evaluations research more generally.

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Mar 2024

Leyla Adiloğlu-Yalçınkaya

Actors' efforts against surrounding institutional pressures to pursue legitimacy are critical. Although scholars have mainly focused on the importance of gaining legitimacy, little is known about the context-specific rhetorical strategies of the actors to legitimate the business model in a peripheral country. In this article, based on extensive material, efforts behind the legitimation of a new airline business model in a peripheral country were explored. This study employed a qualitative research method. The data set consisting of multiple secondary data was analyzed based on the content analysis. Drawing on new institutional theory, this study contributes to previous studies on legitimation and business models by showing actors' arguments content and providing a more nuanced understanding of how actors work on legitimation and how they use context-specific explanations during this legitimation process.

Legitimacy, issue management, and gun debate

Article

Jun 2024
PUBLIC RELAT REV

Promoting academic social intrapreneurship: Developing an international virtual incubator and fostering social impact

Article

May 2024
TECHNOVATION

Green in their own way: Pragmatic and progressive means for cities to overcome institutional barriers to sustainability

Article

Apr 2024

To realise their potential to lead in sustainability development, cities require both symbolic resources such as social capital and legitimacy and material resources such as financial and technical support. Recent research in urban studies has shown that cities overcome institutional barriers to urban sustainability by drawing on support from their wider environment. However, we argue that resource needs vary depending on whether cities spotlight or sideline sustainability. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sustainability managers in cities with variable seriousness about sustainability, and representatives of city networks and support organisations, we show that cities express different symbolic and material resource needs as well as means to acquire them. When cities express pragmatic needs, they seek to demonstrate political feasibility and look to peer cities for legitimation; when cities express progressive needs, they aim to push the boundaries of technical possibility and broadcast their achievements to the world. Since cities require dissimilar external support, skewed attention towards ‘leading’ cities in extant research limits our understanding of how cities can overcome institutional barriers to climate action, especially when these barriers are high. Our findings offer contributions to the literature on city strategies for climate change on the institutional drivers of urban sustainability.

Perspectives on new venture legitimation: A review and research agenda

Thesis

Full-text available

Apr 2024

Iikka Meriläinen

New venture legitimation has become an increasingly active topic of scholarly inquiry over the last two decades. Considering the lack of an up-to-date, wide-spectrum review on the issue, an integrative literature review is conducted to take stock of the current empirical and conceptual knowledge. The present study continues the work started by Überbacher (2014), and the classification developed in that review is now used to review scholarly output until February 2024. The present study reviews 245 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1985 and February 2024 on new venture legitimation. The articles are classified with the perspective typology developed by Überbacher (2014). Shifts in the structure and substance of the literature are analyzed by comparing periods 1985–2012 and 2013–2/2024, which is in alignment with the cutoff year of Überbacher’s review. The findings illustrate a formidable, continuing expansion of the scholarly new venture legitimation literature. Most of the growth has stemmed from the burgeoning of empirical work, particularly over the last two decades. The most common type of study has been qualitative research with institutional theory as the theoretical framework. On the other hand, novel contributions based on organizational ecology have diminished. There has been only moderate activity in the conceptual proceedings on new venture legitimation, particularly towards the end of the period reviewed. Based on the review, an updated research agenda is proposed. The avenues identified as potential for further inquiry are 1) developing a unified legitimation strategy framework, 2) reaching consensus on legitimacy thresholds, 3) conceptualizing liabilities on a general level, 4) theorizing performative new venture legitimation, 5) explicating the metaphysical foundations of organizational legitimacy, and 6) aiming at more interdisciplinary legitimacy research. These six research streams align with understudied aspects of new venture legitimation identified by the present study.

From propriety to validity in new ventures: A nine-year study of three startup companies

Article

Mar 2024
TECHNOVATION

Trust Consensus Within Culturally-Diverse Teams: A Multi-Study Investigation

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

On the Relation Between Felt Trust and Actual Trust: Examining Pathways to and Implications of Leader Trust Meta-Accuracy

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2019

Research has long emphasized that being trusted is a central concern for leaders (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002), but an interesting and important question left unexplored is whether leaders feel trusted by each employee, and whether their felt trust is accurate. Across 2 field studies, we examined the factors that shape the accuracy of leaders' felt trust-or, their trust meta-accuracy-and the implications of trust meta-accuracy for the degree of relationship conflict between leaders and their employees. By integrating research on trust and interpersonal perception, we developed and tested hypotheses based on 2 theoretical mechanisms-an external signaling mechanism and an internal presumed reciprocity mechanism-that theory suggests shape leaders' trust meta-accuracy. In contrast to the existing literature on felt trust, our results reveal that leader trust meta-accuracy is shaped by an internal mechanism and the presumed reciprocity of trust relationships. We further find that whether trust meta-accuracy is associated with positive relational outcomes for leaders depends upon the level of an employee's actual trust in the leader. Our research contributes to burgeoning interest in felt trust by elucidating the mechanisms underlying trust meta-accuracy and suggesting practical directions for leaders who seek to accurately understand how much their employees trust them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The promise and the peril of using social influence to reverse harmful traditions

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2020
Nat. Hum. Behav.

For a policy-maker promoting the end of a harmful tradition, conformist social influence is a compelling mechanism. If an intervention convinces enough people to abandon the tradition, this can spill over and induce others to follow. A key objective is thus to activate such spillovers and amplify an intervention’s effects. With female genital cutting as a motivating example, we develop empirically informed analytical and simulation models to examine this idea. Even if conformity pervades decision-making, spillovers can range from irrelevant to indispensable. Our analysis highlights three considerations. First, ordinary forms of individual heterogeneity can severely limit spillovers, and understanding the heterogeneity in a population is essential. Second, although interventions often target samples of the population biased towards ending the harmful tradition, targeting a representative sample is a more robust way to achieve spillovers. Finally, if the harmful tradition contributes to group identity, the success of spillovers can depend critically on disrupting the link between identity and tradition.

Towards a Theory of Micro-Institutional Processes: Forgotten Roots, Links to Social-Psychological Research, and New Ideas

Chapter

Full-text available

Nov 2019

Chapter 14 Legitimacy Theory

Chapter

May 2006

Morris Zelditch

Lewis, Cordero & Xiong (2020 Forthcoming)

Article

Apr 2020
ENTREP THEORY PRACT

Institutional change is typically studied at the organizational field level; we leverage political culture to examine how the context in which these fields are embedded influence processes of institutional change within such fields. Specifically, we look at the effect of conservative political culture on legitimation and adoption of crowdfunding in the United States. We find that crowdfunding is less popular and more slowly legitimated in conservative regions. However, we also find that crowdfunding’s legitimacy is more important in these regions and that once a legitimacy threshold is reached, the adoption of crowdfunding in conservative regions surpasses that in liberal regions.

Justified by ideology: Why conservatives care less about corporate social irresponsibility

Article

Jun 2020
J BUS RES

We examine the cognitive and motivational process underlying the effect of consumers’ conservatism on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) perceptions of irresponsible versus responsible companies. Building on political psychology and system justification theory, we identify and test market system justification (MSJ) as a motivated social cognition underlying ideological differences in CSR perceptions and reactions. Using four empirical studies, we find that the relatively high MSJ of conservatives (compared to that of liberals) results in less critical CSR perceptions of irresponsible companies and, thus, in less penalizing reactions. Moreover, we find that conservatism influences CSR perceptions of irresponsible companies more strongly than of responsible companies because MSJ affects only perceptions of market behaviors that threaten notions of fair markets (i.e., low CSR). The results improve predictions of consumers’ perceptions and reactions to responsible and irresponsible companies.

Bases of Conformity and Institutional Theory: Understanding Organizational Decision-Making

Chapter

Nov 2019

Managing Legitimacy in Complex and Heterogeneous Environments: Sustainable Development in a Globalized World

Article

Mar 2013
J MANAGE STUD

The sustainability problems of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services increasingly challenges the legitimacy of corporations. Corporate legitimacy, however, is vital to the survival of corporations in competitive environments. The literature distinguishes three strategies that corporations commonly employ to address legitimacy problems: adapt to external expectations, try to manipulate the perception of their stakeholders or engage in a discourse with those who question their legitimacy. This paper develops a theoretical framework for the application of different legitimacy strategies and suggests that corporations facing sustainability problems have to be able to activate all three legitimacy strategies, despite their inherent incompatibilities.

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

Article

Jan 2019

Legitimacy Revisited: Disentangling Propriety, Validity, and Consensus

Abstract and Figures

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