Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 2021"

Gaining Legitimacy by Being Different: Optimal Distinctiveness in Crowdfunding Platforms

Abstract: How do new ventures gain legitimacy and attract critical resources? An increasing body of cultural entrepreneurship research has highlighted an “optimal distinctiveness” trade-off: new ventures nee...

A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements

Abstract: What are the different political institutions rebels create to engage captive civilian populations, and how do they arrive at distinct political arrangements? Rebel-controlled territories host a di

Globalism or Nationalism? The Paradox of Chinese Official Discourse in the Context of the COVID-19 Outbreak.

Abstract: By employing discourse-historical approach and corpus linguistics, this paper examines media reports to analyze the Chinese official discourse in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results demonstrate that a paradox of globalism and nationalism has been simultaneously reflected when reporting the global pandemic. Based on a polarizing discursive construction of positive "self" and negative "others," on many occasions, the globalist and nationalist arguments have been closely intertwined and complement each other to reinforce the legitimacy of the ruling party at home and the international reputation of China under the leadership of the ruling party.

The ‘end of the world’ vs. the ‘end of the month’: understanding social resistance to sustainability transition agendas, a lesson from the Yellow Vests in France

Abstract: This paper investigates the Yellow Vests movement and the extent it constitutes an original platform for resistance to a sustainability transition agenda in the French context. The movement represents a disruption to global climate mitigation solutions that are often formalized at a global scale, and illustrates cultural and economic constraints in providing social justice in the age of climate change. Using a cultural performative approach, this case study reveals the relevance of framing and cultural analyses to understand such resistance. This qualitative exploration initiates a narrative analysis to assess how the universal resolve of the 2015 Paris Conference and the related legitimacy of the sustainability discourse has been further contested by the Yellow Vests and their fractured framing. From the ‘end of the world’ to the ‘end of the month’, we investigate the rise and fall of the legitimacy of the French sustainability discourse by analysing politicians’ and activists’ speeches, historical narratives as well as visual materials of resistance in France in the context of sustainability transitions. Tip of a broader social crisis, the movement reveals an original conflict of temporalities, symptomatic of the inevitable interdependency of socio-economic inequalities to sustainability transitions. Beyond the resistance itself, the Yellow Vests embody an original exemplar for the importance of cultural appropriation within the sustainability discourse’ legitimation processes.

Elite Communication and the Popular Legitimacy of International Organizations

Abstract: This article offers the first systematic and comparative analysis of the effects of elite communication on citizen perceptions of the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). Departing from cueing theory, it develops novel hypotheses about the effects of elite communication under the specific conditions of global governance. It tests these hypotheses by conducting a population-based survey experiment among almost 10,000 residents of three countries in relation to five IOs. The evidence suggests four principal findings. First, communication by national governments and civil society organizations has stronger effects on legitimacy perceptions than communication by IOs themselves. Secondly, elite communication affects legitimacy perceptions irrespective of whether it invokes IOs’ procedures or performance as grounds for criticism or endorsement. Thirdly, negative messages are more effective than positive messages in shaping citizens' legitimacy perceptions. Fourthly, comparing across IOs indicates that elite communication is more often effective in relation to the IMF, NAFTA and WTO, than the EU and UN.

Corporate environmental performance and financing constraints: An empirical study in the Chinese context

Abstract: Between 2006 and 2017, 2,965 Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai/Shenzhen Stock Exchange have been studied to investigate whether better corporate environmental performance (CEP) leads to better access to capital and mitigates firms' financing constraints. It is hypothesized that better access to finance can be attributed to the increased government support due to enhanced firm political legitimacy and market legitimacy. Event studies find that the firms with better CEP suffer significantly lower finance constraints, and the evidence from the studies proves that firms' political legitimacy and market legitimacy are important in mitigating finance constraints. The results of the studies are confirmed by using two alternative measures of capital constraints and CEP, an instrumental variable approach, and a simultaneous equations approach.

Managing the Value Appropriation Dilemma in Business Model Innovation

Abstract: Managers and designers of innovative business models that are enabled by emerging technologies need to build legitimacy with ecosystem participants. Yet increasing legitimacy within the ecosystem r...

Legitimacy Revisited: Disentangling Propriety, Validity, and Consensus

Abstract: 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 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 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 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.

Bright harmony of environmental management initiatives for achieving corporate social responsibility authenticity and legitimacy: Glimpse of hotel and tourism industry

Abstract: The study aims to find out the effect of environmental management initiatives (EMI) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) authenticity and CSR legitimacy. The current study also examines the influence of CSR authenticity on CSR legitimacy and mediating effect of CSR authenticity in the connection between EMI and CSR legitimacy. Data were collected from 309 managers of hotels and tourism industries. Statistical techniques such as correlation and regression were used through AMOS 7.0 software for data analysis. Results reveal that EMI positively predicts CSR authenticity. Moreover, CSR authenticity significantly predicts the CSR legitimacy. The direct link between EMI and CSR legitimacy is also positive and significant. The findings also reveal that CSR authenticity mediates the relationship between both EMI and CSR legitimacy links. These findings suggested that managers in hotel and tourism industry should participate in CSR activities and well‐being of the societies using the organizational resources for attaining CSR legitimacy.

Property, Legitimacy, Ideology: A Reality Check

Abstract: Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some lib...

Citizen participation, perceived public service performance, and trust in government: Evidence from health policy reforms in Hong Kong

Abstract: Citizen participation is advocated as an effective instrument to retain and promote government legitimacy, but to what extent and through what mechanisms participation affects government trust have

Culture, Institutions & the Long Divergence

Abstract: Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the cultural values that complement the prevailing institutions. As a result, they miss the role of cultural values in either supporting the persistence of or inducing change in the economic and institutional environment. In this paper, we address these issues by modeling the joint evolution of institutions and culture. In doing so, we place the various hypotheses of economic divergence into one, unifying framework. We highlight the role that cultural transmission plays in reinforcing institutional evolution toward either theocratic or secular states. We extend the model to shed light on political decentralization and technological change in the two regions.

Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms.

Abstract: Democratic stability depends on citizens on the losing side accepting election outcomes. Can rhetoric by political leaders undermine this norm? Using a panel survey experiment, we evaluate the effects of exposure to multiple statements from former president Donald Trump attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election. Although exposure to these statements does not measurably affect general support for political violence or belief in democracy, it erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases belief that the election is rigged among people who approve of Trump's job performance. These results suggest that rhetoric from political elites can undermine respect for critical democratic norms among their supporters.

Legitimacy Processes and Trajectories of Co-Prosumption Services: Insights from Coworking Spaces

Abstract: Our study applies legitimacy theorizing to service research, zooming in on co-prosumption service business models, which reside on significant direct contacts among provider-actors and customers as...

How White nationalists mobilize genetics: From genetic ancestry and human biodiversity to counterscience and metapolitics

Abstract: Objectives Our aim in this study was to understand how genetics ideas are appropriated and mobilized online toward the political projects of White nationalism and the alt right. Studying three different online venues, we investigated how genetics is used to support racial realism, hereditarianism, and racial hierarchy. We analyzed how these ideas are connected to political and metapolitical projects. In addition, we examined the strategies used to build authority for these interpretations. Methods We analyze three online venues in which genetics has been mobilized to advance racial realism and hereditarian explanations of racial differences. These were (a) the use of genetic ancestry tests in online nationalist discussions, (b) blogs and other venues in which the human biodiversity ideas are articulated, (c) activities surrounding the OpenPsych collection of online journals. Ethnographic and interpretive methods were applied to investigate scientific and political meanings of efforts to mobilize genetic ideas. Results We found that White nationalists use genetic ancestry tests to align White identity with ideas of racial purity and diversity, educating each other about genetics, and debating the boundaries of Whiteness. "Human biodiversity" has been mobilized as a movement to catalog and create hereditarian ideas about racial differences and to distribute them as "red pills" to transform online discourse. The OpenPsych journals have allowed amateur hereditarian psychologists to publish papers, coordinate activity, and legitimate their project at the academic margins. Conclusions These various appropriations of genetics aim to further racial realism and hereditarian explanations of racial social and behavioral differences. Beyond these substantive aims, on a "metapolitical" level, they serve to reframe concepts and standards for political and scientific discussion of race, challenge structures of academic legitimacy and expertise, and build a cadre of ideological foot soldiers armed with an argumentative toolkit. As professional anthropologists and geneticists aim to accurately communicate their science and its implications for understanding human differences to the public, they must contend with these substantive claims and metapolitical contexts.

Rebel Justice during Armed Conflict

Abstract: Research on rebel behavior focuses on the violent conduct of these groups. Work on rebel governance, however, has documented the myriad ways in which rebel groups seek to gain legitimacy, project s...

Nudgeability: Mapping Conditions of Susceptibility to Nudge Influence.

Abstract: Nudges are behavioral interventions to subtly steer citizens' choices toward "desirable" options. An important topic of debate concerns the legitimacy of nudging as a policy instrument, and there is a focus on issues relating to nudge transparency, the role of preexisting preferences people may have, and the premise that nudges primarily affect people when they are in "irrational" modes of thinking. Empirical insights into how these factors affect the extent to which people are susceptible to nudge influence (i.e., "nudgeable") are lacking in the debate. This article introduces the new concept of nudgeability and makes a first attempt to synthesize the evidence on when people are responsive to nudges. We find that nudge effects do not hinge on transparency or modes of thinking but that personal preferences moderate effects such that people cannot be nudged into something they do not want. We conclude that, in view of these findings, concerns about nudging legitimacy should be softened and that future research should attend to these and other conditions of nudgeability.

The influence of external political events on social networks: the case of the Brexit Twitter Network

Abstract: The social media debate preceding the 2016 Brexit referendum represents a yet another instance of the growing role of social networking sites, also known as social media, in steering the dynamics of the socio-political process nowadays. Considering the scale of the phenomenon as well as the variety of concerns it raises vis-a-vis transparency, equality, representation, and legitimacy of the political process, it is imperative to query the mechanisms behind the relationship that unfolds between social media, their users and the political process. To do this, this paper employs event study analysis and recent advances in data mining and data analysis to examine how certain non-virtual political events constituent of the Brexit debate had been played out in the social media realm and influenced the social media users’ stance toward the very question of Brexit. This composite methodological approach that this study adopts allows to measure how non-virtual political events influenced the network of users who discussed the withdrawal of the UK from the EU in Twitter in the weeks prior to the Brexit referendum. The outcomes of this study suggest that social networking sites play a pivotal role not only on how information is diffused over the network but also on user’s message creation, dissemination behaviour and the shape of the social network itself.

The right kind of participation?: The effect of a deliberative mini-public on the perceived legitimacy of public decision-making

Abstract: Deliberative mini-publics have been put forward as a form of citizen participation that is particularly well suited to improve the legitimacy of public decision-making. Using a survey experiment, w...

The authority of science and the legitimacy of international organisations: OECD, UNESCO and World Bank in global education governance

Abstract: International organisations’ (IOs) legitimacy in global educational governance is commonly seen as a function of their regulative or normative power. By contrast, this paper stresses the increasing...

The double-edged sword effect of political ties on performance in emerging markets: The mediation of innovation capability and legitimacy

Abstract: To improve our understanding of the bright side and the dark side of political ties and determine the processes linking political ties to firm performance in emerging markets, we investigate the underlying mechanism of political ties’ effects from the perspective of dynamic capability theory and institutional theory. We posit that reduced market-focused innovation capability and strengthened legitimacy mediate the effect of political ties on firm performance. In addition, to capture the nature of the relationship between political ties and performance, we adopt a contingency perspective in our examination of the moderating roles of legal enforceability and competitive intensity. Specifically, we suggest that legal enforceability buffers the negative impact of political ties on market-focused innovation capability but mitigates the positive impact of political ties on firm legitimacy. Moreover, competitive intensity enhances the positive impact of market-focused innovation capability and firm legitimacy on firm performance. We test our hypotheses using a survey with 362 respondents in China. In conclusion, our findings provide important insights into how Chinese firms effectively utilize political ties to improve their performance.

Power of Paradox : Grassroots Organizations’ Legitimacy Strategies Over Time

Abstract: Fringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of proposition...

Freedom of Expression Challenged: Scientists’ Perspectives on Hidden Forms of Suppression and Self-censorship:

Abstract: The media have become an important arena where struggles over the symbolic legitimacy of expert authority take place and where scientific experts increasingly have to compete for public recognition...