Abstract
This chapter brings together and discusses the implications of neo-institutional theories about organizational change as translation for the implementation of stakeholder management and the legitimate business organization. It suggests that – according to these theories – being a legitimate business organization is not something that the organization is but rather something that the organization does. First, the organization needs to institutionalize stakeholder management as the way the business organization organizes its management processes. Then it needs to negotiate and develop its identity as a socially constructed boundary object that is interpreted, theorized, and viewed as legitimate across stakeholders intersecting social worlds. Then as more and more humans and stakeholder groups become interested and mobilized, exercise their roles, and start acting on the basis of the assumption that the particular business organization as a boundary object is to be interpreted and viewed as legitimate, the legitimate business organization is becoming constructed as a social fact.
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Scheuer, J.D. (2019). Change, Institutional Theory, and Business Legitimacy. In: Rendtorff, J. (eds) Handbook of Business Legitimacy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_13-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_13-1
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