Factors Affecting Individual Decisions Based on Business Legitimacy

In this paper, we study customer's legitimacy preferences from the perspective of individual social profiles. By doing this, we aim to determine the influence of the social context on decision-making processes that derive from organizational legitimacy perceptions. Through data collected from a sample of 258 individuals, we relate five individual characteristics to four business legitimacy typologies using regression analysis techniques. Results show that individuals with higher social consciousness are prone to make decisions about organizations that take into account moral and regulatory legitimacy perceptions. However, low-trust customers and customers with high decision visibility are more likely to assess organizations based on cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy considerations.     

Exploring the multi-level processes of legitimacy in transnational social enterprises

Transnational entrepreneurship has emerged as a form of migrants' participation in the social, economic, and political lives of both their countries of origin and of residence. Leveraging increasing evidence about migrants' involvment in transnational social enterprises, we examine the multi-level processes through which organizational legitimacy is molded by transnational entrepreneurs to reflect country-level institutional settings, and how organizational-level legitimacy affects entrepreneurs' social status. We longitudinally examine the multi-level processes of legitimation in a transnational social enterprise operated by Ghanaian migrants across Italy and Ghana. We analyze secondary and ethnographic data for two years, observing how transnational social enterprises harvest moral and pragmatic legitimacy from the institutional contexts in which they operate. We study how entrepreneurs construe their social status through pragmatic legitimacy obtained from their transnational ventures, and their institutional environments inspired by micro- and meso legitimacy reconfigurations. We discuss theoretical implications for social and transnational entrepreneurship and practical contributions for policy-making.     

The impact of media on the legitimacy of new market categories: The case of broadband internet

Building on research in institutional theory and market categories, we argue that media coverage, through the effects of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy, influence the creation of new market categories. Using data on the broadband access industry, we develop and test a media coverage model of market category entries, demonstrating the legitimacy effects of media-based information exchange on the emergence of new market categories. We include two post hoc analyses on mediation effects to test the relationship between population density and media coverage. These results indicate a possible mediation relationship, which we discuss in the implications of our study.     

Sectoral Differences in Value Congruence and Job Attitudes: The Case of Nursing Home Employees

Drawing on a survey of nursing staff of nursing homes in a Midwestern state in the United States, the study examines how the relationships between employee–organization value congruence and job attitudes vary between nonprofit and for-profit organizational types. Statistical comparison of the levels of employee value congruence and job attitudes does not suggest significant difference between the two types of employees. Although value congruence is found positively associated with nursing home employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and negatively associated with intent to quit, consistent with prior research, the difference in the magnitude of the relationships between the two types of employees is not found. These findings suggest inconsistency with conventional wisdom of profiling employee value according to organizational ownership type.     

Legitimacy-Seeking Organizational Strategies in Controversial Industries: A Case Study Analysis and a Bidimensional Model

Controversial industry sectors, such as alcohol, gambling, and tobacco, though long-established, suffer organizational legitimacy problems. The authors consider various strategies used to seek organizational legitimacy in the U.K. casino gambling market. The findings are based on a detailed, multistakeholder case study pertaining to a failed bid for a regional supercasino. They suggest four generic strategies for seeking organizational legitimacy in this highly complex context: construing, earning, bargaining, and capturing, as well as pathways that combine these strategies. The case analysis and proposed bidimensional model of generic legitimacy-seeking strategies contribute to limited literature on organizational legitimacy in controversial industry sectors. In addition, beyond organizations active in controversial contexts, this study and its implications are useful for individuals and organizations supporting or opposing the organizational legitimacy of organizations in controversial industries.     

The Hierarchy of Consumer Participation and Patterns of Economic,Social, and Political Participation1

This article examines relationships between the hierarchy of consumer participation and propensities for general political and community participation. The results of an empirical study reveal how patterns of participation, knowledge seeking, and decision making are interrelated and deeply rooted in the sociopolitical culture. Cluster analysis reveals that economic, social, and political bias are cumulative in individuals, creating differential patterns in the American political culture resulting in a comparative advantage for some and a structural disadvantage for others. The findings have important implications for understanding behavior in democratic polities, market economic systems, political, economic, and social participation, citizen/consumer education and protection, and policymaking.     

Self‐directed learning readiness as an antecedent of organizational commitment: a Korean study

This study was to test whether employees possessing a higher level of self‐directed learning (SDL) readiness have significantly stronger organizational commitment in Korean business settings. Job position and length of service in the workplace, which were previously found as related variables to influence organizational commitment, were included to see how strongly they are associated with organizational commitment. This study found that SDL readiness was a meaningful variable in terms of predicting both affective and continuance commitment. While SDL readiness is negatively related to continuance commitment, it is positively associated with affective commitment. The findings of this study supported the theoretical assumption drawn in a review of the literature.     

Factors influencing employee perceptions of customer service climate

This study examines the relationships between certain organizational variables and employees' perceptions of the customer service climate in their organization. In addition, the role of organizational commitment in this process is examined. Results indicate that rewarding employees for service excellence, allowing their voice to be heard by upper management, providing employees with the information and technology needed to do their jobs, providing adequate training to customer contact employees, allowing employees enough time to get their tasks done, and providing a work environment conducive to getting work done are all positively associated with employee perceptions of customer service climate. Based on mediated regression and a LISREL analysis, these relationships are all found to be partially mediated by organizational commitment. These results are consistent with previous customer service research, which has found organizational support and rewards to be positively related to customer service. We extend this literature by showing that organizational commitment may be a key variable linking organizational support and rewards to customer service. Implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered.Lincoln National Corporation     

Organizational Virtue and Stakeholder Interdependence: An Empirical Examination of Financial Intermediaries and IPO Firms

Organizational virtue orientation (OVO), an organizational-level construct, refers to the integrated set of beliefs and values that support ethical character traits and virtuous behaviors. To advance the study of organizational virtue, we examine OVO in firms making their initial public offerings (IPOs), with respect to key external stakeholders that serve as financial intermediaries (i.e., venture capital firms and underwriting banks). Drawing on stakeholder and resource dependence theories, we argue that mutual interdependencies occur between financial intermediaries and IPO firms such that venture capital firms’ ownership levels and underwriter reputation are positively associated with the selection of more virtuous IPO firms. We also argue for the moderating relationship of IPO firm age on these main relationships; since IPO firms have more history and information availability, less importance will be placed on OVO in the selection process. In support of our hypotheses, the results of this study suggest the organizational virtue of IPO firms influences the selection decisions of financial intermediaries by reflecting positively on these key stakeholders to improve legitimacy and reputation.     

Leaders’ Moral Competence and Employee Outcomes: The Effects of Psychological Empowerment and Person–Supervisor Fit

This study examined how leaders’ moral competence is linked to employees’ task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. Based on a sample of 102 employee–supervisor pairs from seven organizations in South Korea, the results of this study revealed that leaders’ moral competence was positively associated with employees’ task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors toward leaders (OCBS). As expected, employees’ psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between leaders’ moral competence and employees’ task performance and OCBS. Furthermore, person–supervisor fit (PS fit) moderated the relationship between leaders’ moral competence and employees’ psychological empowerment such that the relationships became stronger for individuals higher rather than lower in PS fit.     

Leveraging consumer personality and social media marketing to improve a brand's social media equity

Consumer personality traits impact consumer actions, preferences, online behaviour and shopping motives. This study examines personality traits as drivers of social media equity by addressing the mechanisms under which consumer personality traits influence social media equity. We aim to combine consumer-level information with brand-level metrics to advance our understanding of consumers' associations with brands on social media and how specific consumer personality traits can be leveraged to improve a brand's social media equity. Using a self-administered survey, a total of 418 respondents from an online consumer panel participated in this study. The results from structural equation modelling revealed that while extraversion, openness to experience and neuroticism personality traits are positively associated with brand engagement and brand advocacy, agreeableness and conscientiousness are significantly associated with brand advocacy and not with brand engagement. This study advances theory by examining how consumer personality traits influence social media equity via brand engagement and brand advocacy as mediators. The findings provide rich practical insights into underlying mechanisms through which marketers can increase social media equity using consumer personality traits.     

Re-examining foreign subsidiary survival in a transition economy: Impact of market identity overlap and conflict

Taking an identity perspective from the organizational ecology literature, we re-examine foreign subsidiary survival in a transition economy. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) with a socialist identity and privately owned enterprises (POEs) with a market identity exert different influences on foreign-owned enterprises (FOEs). SOEs and POEs affect the survival of FOEs primarily through the cognitive legitimation process. SOEs tend to crowd out FOEs due to identity conflict. Owing to identity overlap, POEs tend to increase the survival chances of FOEs. The level of socialist legacy in regions where FOEs are located affects the sociopolitical legitimacy of FOEs’ market identity, thus moderating the relationships between SOE and POE density and the survival of foreign subsidiaries.     

On the (Re)Construction of Corruption in the Media: A Critical Discursive Approach

Although corruption has become a hot topic in organizational research, few studies have examined how it is socially constructed. To partially bridge this gap, the present paper takes a critical discursive perspective on the representation of corruption in the media. The empirical focus is on the media coverage of a corruption scandal that revolved around two instances of formal corruption charges and successive acquittals. Based on the analysis, the paper exemplifies how the media makes sense of and gives sense to controversial activities in response to changing and at times contradictory information. In particular, the paper highlights interplay between four dominant discourses—transgression, political, public scapegoating, and individualistic—that that were mobilized throughout the media coverage. These discourses were intimately linked with wider dynamics between problematizing and restorative media framings and thus provided crucial means of reconstructing and reformulating the (il)legitimacy of the reported activities throughout the scandal. While the findings are context specific, this study suggests that similar interplay and dynamics are important aspects of media sensemaking around controversial activities related to corruption.     

Network centrality,organizational innovation,and performance: A meta‐analysis

Based on samples from 40 studies encompassing 15,860 organizations, we use meta‐analysis methods to examine the relationships between network centrality, organizational innovation, and performance, and to predict the influence of organization size, institutional environment, and industry on these relationships. Results show that network centrality positively influences both organizational innovation and performance. In addition, findings indicate that the impact of network centrality on organizational innovation is stronger for small organizations while that on organizational performance is stronger for large organizations. The influence of network centrality on overall organizational innovation/performance is stronger for organizations in developed institutional environments as well as in knowledge‐intensive industries. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What fuzzy requests bring to frontline employees: An absorptive capacity theory perspective

This study uses absorptive capacity theory to construct a model to explain how frontline employees learn from customers’ fuzzy requests and then improve their performance. The research model is empirically examined using data collected from 364 hotel front desk service employees and further analyzed through a structural equation model. The study shows that request severity significantly influences need recognition, experience assimilation, concept transformation and inertia change. Request legitimacy has a positive effect on need recognition, experience assimilation, concept transformation, inertia change and cost assessment. Performance is positively affected by experience assimilation, concept transformation, inertia change and cost assessment. Some meditation and moderation effects are also identified. This study is the first to reveal the positive effects of fuzzy requests. These findings may help managers better handle and utilize fuzzy requests, with implications for organizational policy and for the support of frontline employees.     

The Principled Legal Firm: Insights into the Professional Ideals and Ethical Values of Partners and Lawyers

Understanding how the professional ideals and values of partners influence lawyers’ everyday life is a relatively unexplored area given the inherent difficulties of gaining access to lawyers. This case study sheds light on the professional ideals and ethical values of partners and lawyers in a mid-tier Sydney law firm. Semi-structured interviews with partners and lawyers/legal clerks reveal how partners’ professional ideals and ethical values play a pivotal role in: (1) upholding positive normative evaluations of lawyer/firm propriety (moral legitimacy), (2) stressing the importance of a balanced working life (cognitive legitimacy) and (3) satisfying younger lawyers’ needs for personal support, autonomy and responsibility (pragmatic legitimacy). The principled actions of partners are portrayed as the cornerstone of shaping a moral community in legal practise.     

Will enterprise social networking systems promote knowledge management and organizational learning? An empirical study

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, enterprise social media practitioners and researchers are keen to know how the enterprise usage of social media can be converted into the improved organizational performance. Meanwhile, organizational learning has long been considered as one of the measures of organizational performance. This article investigated the impact of enterprise social networking systems (ESNS) usage on knowledge management processes and organizational learning; in particular, we examined the mediating role of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. Four theories from sociology and strategic management were used to build the hypotheses in the research model. An online survey was conducted to empirically test the model. Our study results showed that ESNS usage directly and indirectly influences organizational learning; and that knowledge management processes (knowledge creation and sharing) mediate the path between the two. This study contributes to the existing literature on enterprise social media for three reasons. First, it is among the first to connect the three independent concepts (social media, knowledge management, and organizational learning) and explore their relationships in one theoretical framework. Second, this work also specifically examines the influence of ESNS (Yammer in this case) on organizational processes and outcomes. Third, this is a pioneering study that employs multiple theories to address the research questions under the organizational social media context. Therefore, the research gives implications for both practitioners and scholars who are interested in understanding the effectiveness of ESNS usage in the modern organizations today.     

The Evolution of Business Groups’ Corporate Social Responsibility

Although establishing gender equality in board and managerial positions has recently become more important for organizations, companies with low levels of gender diversity seem to perceive an ethical dilemma regarding the ways, in which they attempt to attain it. One way that organizations try to move toward gender equality is through the use of their corporate websites to manage potential applicants’ impressions of their current levels of, and actions to improve, gender diversity. The dilemma is whether to truthfully communicate their low level of gender diversity, conceal it, or exaggerate it. On the one hand, organizations that are truthful may find it difficult to achieve equality because women are less attracted to companies that lack diversity. On the other hand, organizations that are untruthful risk their moral legitimacy. The present work investigates gender diversity-related communication on the corporate websites of 99 major German companies. Based on theoretical work on minority attraction, we apply an organizational impression management taxonomy to guide our in-depth content analysis. With this approach, we hope to advance the understanding of how the issue of gender diversity is presented on corporate websites, which is useful for both organizational decision makers as well as diversity researchers. We found that although gender diversity-related communications on corporate websites contain both assertive and defensive organizational impression management tactics, as well as a third type of tactic we refer to as “acknowledgement,” assertive tactics were used more frequently. We argue the existence of a paradox whereby organizations use assertive impression management tactics to maintain pragmatic legitimacy but compromise their moral legitimacy by doing so. Furthermore, we argue that moral legitimacy can be maintained or restored through the sincere use of defensive impression management tactics and acknowledgement.     

Managing Institutional Complexity: A Longitudinal Study of Legitimacy Strategies at a Sportswear Brand Company

Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures.     

New to the game and questioning the rules: The experiences and beliefs of founders who start imitative versus innovative firms

This paper examines how founders' work experiences and beliefs about an industry's prevailing practices influence the degree of novelty exhibited by their firms. Our results indicate that extensive experience in the core of an organizational field constrains individuals into acting as “imitative entrepreneurs,” essentially reproducing established routines even if they question their legitimacy. In contrast, founders with greater experience in the field's periphery are more likely to act as “innovative entrepreneurs,” as are those who more strongly question the ethicality of prevailing practices. Doubts about the functionality of established routines are not sufficient, on their own, to provoke acts of innovative entrepreneurship.