Abstract
Organizational legitimacy has raised great concern in management research; however, no bibliometric studies have been conducted in this field. The aim of this paper is to show the structure formed by the countries and institutions that contribute to research on organizational legitimacy. The development and evolution of organizational legitimacy as a field of study is shown through a bibliometric study in four 5-year periods (from 1995 to 2014). The results provide information on the main countries and institutions that contribute to research in the field of organizational legitimacy, the lines of research that have been developed and who share them, how legitimacy research between countries and institutions is related, which countries and institutions represent real turning points in this field and how the dissemination of organizational legitimacy research between countries and institutions has evolved. In general, this paper shows how since the beginning of research on the concept of legitimacy applied to organizations and the countries that have generated the highest frequency of citations are the USA, Canada, England and Australia, followed later by China, the Netherlands, France and Spain, while the institutions with the most significant frequencies are Univ. of Alberta, Penn State Univ., Harvard Univ., Warwick Univ., York Univ. and Erasmus Univ. This study provides a comprehensive review of the contributors to the discipline of organizational legitimacy, different schools and lines of research, as well as a starting point for future researchers to continue to build a solid theoretical base.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bettencourt, L. M. A., Kaiser, D. I., & Kaur, J. (2009). Scientific discovery and topological transitions in collaboration networks. Journal of Informetrics, 3(3), 210–221.
Bitektine, A. (2011). Toward a theory of social judgments of organizations: The case of legitimacy, reputation, and status. Academy of Management Review, 36(1), 151–179.
Chen, C. (2004). Searching for intellectual turning points: progressive knowledge domain visualization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101. Suppl 1(suppl 1), 5303–5310.
Chen, C. (2006). CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(3), 359–377.
Chen, C., Ibekwe-SanJuan, F., & Hou, J. (2010). The structure and dynamics of co-citation clusters: A multiple-perspective co-citation analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(7), 1386–1409.
Cho, C. H., & Patten, D. M. (2007). The role of environmental disclosures as tools of legitimacy: A research note. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 32(7), 639–647.
Cruz-Suárez, A., Prado-Román, A., & Prado-Román, M. (2014). Cognitive legitimacy, resource access, and organizational outcomes. RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas, 54(5), 575–584.
Deephouse, D. L., Bundy, J., Tost, L. P., & Suchman, M. C. (2017). Organizational legitimacy: Six key questions. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T. Lawrence, & R. Meyer (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Deephouse, D. L., & Suchman, M. (2008). Legitimacy in organizational institutionalism. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, R. Suddaby, & K. Sahlin-Andersson (Eds.), The sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 49–77). London: Sage Publications.
Díez-Martín, F., Prado-Roman, C., & Blanco-González, A. (2013). Beyond legitimacy: Legitimacy types and organizational success. Management Decision, 51(10), 1954–1969.
Fang, Y. (2015). Visualizing the structure and the evolving of digital medicine: A scientometrics review. Scientometrics, 105(1), 5–21.
Kostova, T., Roth, K., & Dacin, M. T. (2008). Institutional theory in the study of multinational corporations: A critique and new directions. Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 994–1006.
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–886.
Pollack, J. M., Rutherford, M. W., & Nagy, B. G. (2012). Preparedness and cognitive legitimacy as antecedents of new venture funding in televised business pitches. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 36(5), 915–939.
Pollock, T., & Rindova, V. (2003). Media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings. Academy of Management Journal, 46(5), 631–642.
Ramos-Rodríguez, A.-R., & Ruíz-Navarro, J. (2004). Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: A bibliometric study of the strategic management journal, 1980–2000. Strategic Management Journal, 25(10), 981–1004.
Scherer, A. G., & Palazzo, G. (2007). Toward a political conception of corporate responsibility: Business and society seen from a habermasian perspective. Academy of Management Review, 32(4), 1096–1120.
Scott, W. R. (1995). Institutions and organizations. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Small, H. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two documents. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 24(4), 265–269.
Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571.
Suddaby, R., Bitektine, A., & Haack, P. (2017). Legitimacy. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 451–478.
Suddaby, R., & Greenwood, R. (2005). Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50 .(March, 35–67.
Tornikoski, E. T., & Newbert, S. L. (2007). Exploring the determinants of organizational emergence: A legitimacy perspective. Journal of Business Venturing, 22(2), 311–335.
Tost, L. (2011). An integrative model of legitimacy judgments. Academy of Management Review, 36(4), 686–710.
Überbacher, F. (2014). Legitimation of new ventures: A review and research programme. Journal of Management Studies, 51(4), 667–698.
Vogel, R., & Güttel, W. H. (2012). The dynamic capability view in strategic management: A bibliometric review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(4), 426–446.
Zimmerman, M. a., & Zeitz, G. J. (2002). Beyond survival: Achieving new venture growth by building legitimacy. Academy of Management Review, 27(3), 414.
Zupic, I., & Cater, T. (2015). Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organizational Research Methods, 18(3), 429–472.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Professors Luis Tomás Díez de Castro and Emilio Pablo Díez de Castro for their generous and expert guidance for this research and many other investigations. We are grateful for the recommendations received from our methodological seminar mates of the Camilo Prado Foundation and the European Academy of Management and Business Economics (AEDEM).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Díez-Martín, F., Diez, L., Blanco-Gonzalez, A. (2018). Organizational Legitimacy Research: Contributing Countries and Institutions from 1995 to 2014. In: Díez-De-Castro, E., Peris-Ortiz, M. (eds) Organizational Legitimacy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75990-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75990-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75989-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75990-6
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)