How Do Individuals Judge Organizational Legitimacy? Effects of Attributed Motives and Credibility on Organizational Legitimacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Jahn ◽  
Melanie Eichhorn ◽  
Rolf Brühl

This experimental study examines individuals’ legitimacy judgments. We develop a model that demonstrates the role of attributed motives and corporate credibility for the evaluation of organizational legitimacy and test this model with an experimental vignette study. Our results show that when a corporate activity creates benefits for the firm—in addition to social benefits—individuals attribute more extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are ascribed when a corporation is perceived as being driven by external rewards as opposed to an altruistic commitment to a social cause. Extrinsic motives negatively affect corporate credibility and organizational legitimacy judgments. This article contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of organizational legitimacy judgment by shedding light on the individual’s perspective and expounding the relationship between attributed motives, corporate credibility, and organizational legitimacy.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Steven E. Kaplan ◽  
Danny Lanier ◽  
Kelly R. Pope ◽  
Janet A. Samuels

ABSTRACT Whistleblowing reports, if properly investigated, facilitate the early detection of fraud. Although critical, investigation-related decisions represent a relatively underexplored component of the whistleblowing process. Investigators are responsible for initially deciding whether to follow-up on reports alleging fraud. We report the results of an experimental study examining the follow-up intentions of highly experienced healthcare investigators. Participants, in the role of an insurance investigator, are asked to review a whistleblowing report alleging billing fraud occurring at a medical provider. Thus, participants are serving as external investigators. In a between-participant design, we manipulate the report type and whether the caller previously confronted the wrongdoer. We find that compared to an anonymous report, a non-anonymous report is perceived as more credible and follow-up intentions stronger. We also find that perceived credibility fully mediates the relationship between report type and follow-up intentions. Previous confrontation is not significantly associated with either perceived credibility or follow-up intentions. Data Availability: Data are available upon request.


2021 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Frank W. Munger ◽  
Peerawich Thoviriyavej ◽  
Vorapitchaya Rabiablok

Women lawyers are increasing seen among the leading legal defenders of human rights and social movements in Thailand. Increasing visibility is partly a result of news coverage and social media, but women lawyers activism has far older roots. In this article, we examine two related processes of change that contribute to women’s emergence as leading social cause practitioners. First, we discuss the relationship between Thailand’s legal system and its social and political development since the end of the nineteenth century. Second, we employ career narratives of three women lawyers with innovative practices for social causes as a lens through which to examine how lawyers transform available resources into an identity, law practice, and law. We discuss not only the role of prior generations of women lawyers, connections between influential elites and social cause lawyers, and the founding of a few key organizations within the NGO community, but also the role of the women as architects of their own careers. We conclude that they have become successful by aligning their practices with emerging social movements and progressive bureaucrats, unexpectedly creating professional identities with somewhat different relationships to the rule of law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baoliang Hu ◽  
Tao Zhang ◽  
Shuai Yan

Business model (BM) innovation driven by corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted considerable attention from scholars. However, the understanding of whether and how CSR influences BM innovation is limited. Therefore, this paper aimed to fill these gaps by exploring the influence of CSR on BM innovation through the mediating role of organizational legitimacy (OL). This paper proposed research hypotheses on the relationships among CSR, OL, and BM innovation and empirically tested these hypotheses by using the hierarchical regression analysis method with data collected from 186 firms. The results of this study show that both CSR and OL positively influence BM innovation. The results also show that CSR positively influences OL and OL mediates the relationship between CSR and BM innovation. This paper provides new insights into the relationship between CSR and BM innovation by answering questions of whether and how CSR influences BM innovation. This paper may help managers better understand how to link CSR and BM innovation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
Simina Pîrvu

In a series of lectures in 1994, Nadine Gordimer remarks the different status of Africa which is no longer at the edge of the empire, but on the contrary, in the center of it. In this respect, post-apartheid Africa has rebuilt its national identity on the background of global events that write universal history, offering citizens the chance to escape their country's constraints and bring important key elements in the globalization process. Thus, replacing apartheid themes in a new country is an extreme task by the applicant. Some of the favourite subjects of the "old guard" are the following: the importance of multiculturalism in post-apartheid South Africa, the writer's status, vulgarisation of violence due to mass-media, reconciliation with a violent past and their economic and cultural implications, the fight against AIDS, sexual emancipation, globalization and loss of cultural and national identity, uprooting, migration and economic exile which replaced major pre-existing concerns about violence, racial and gender discrimination, the relationship between literature and politics, or the role of ethics in literature. The same situation can be applied to eastern countries. Even though they were not "postcolonial" in the classical sense of the term, applicable to the former British, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch colonies, the "post-communist transition" through which they passed included the disarmament of a certain political and economic "occupation". People had to adapt to the new order, to the new reality, which was a complex process, a difficult one, that implied, many times, exile. Therefore, the purpose of my argument is to present what consequences can occur at the psychological level because of the attempt of adaptation of the characters to the new social and political order, by imitation, postcolonial and post-communist context. And here comes the question: does imitation facilitate adaptation? Although the logical answer would be yes, we will notice, by discussing the two texts, exactly the opposite.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Howard Suitt

Abstract Recent scholarship examines the relationship between moral injury and religion but rarely analyzes social processes at work therein. This article uses data from interviews with 47 post-9/11 veterans who once or currently identified as Christian to explore how religious beliefs and practices preempt, mitigate, or exacerbate moral injury. While many veterans experienced potentially morally injurious events, the differences between those with moral injury and those without depended on whether they could find resonance with meaning-making toolkits amid trauma. Dissonance stirred by incoherence in one’s moral narrative and betrayal of significant relationships spurred manifestations of moral injury. Those who achieved resonance relied on religious moral frames they brought with them or those supplied by military culture, or they engaged in explicit moral deliberation. This study reveals a complex process of belief maintenance during moral crises that extends and challenges previous examinations of culture in action, resonance, and moral injury.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1302-1322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Tsachouridi ◽  
Irene Nikandrou

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect effect of perceived organizational virtuousness (POV) on organizational spontaneity. The assumed indirect effect is investigated through the social identity perspective. As such, organizational identification, pride and respect are examined as mediators of the POV-spontaneity relationship. Design/methodology/approach To test the hypotheses the authors conducted two studies. First, the authors conducted an experimental study with 136 participants in which the authors investigated the role of organizational identification as mediator of the examined relationship. Second, the authors conducted a field study in which 572 employees working in various organizations participated. In this study, pride and respect were incorporated as first-step mediators explaining serially (indirectly) the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable through organizational identification. Findings The findings of the experimental study indicate that organizational identification mediates the positive relationship between POV and organizational spontaneity. The results of the field study indicate that pride and respect serially mediate the examined relationship through organizational identification. Practical implications The study accumulates further evidence that treating employees with care and respect can bring benefits to organizations. Perceiving organizational virtuousness makes employees identify with their organization and view organizational successes as their own. Thus, they become more willing to benefit the organization. Originality/value This study is unique to the literature by being the first to examine the relationship between POV and organizational spontaneity through social identity processes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Habil Otanga

The assertion that people are more likely to help identified as opposed to unidentified victims has not been investigated among secondary victims. This experimental study examined a) whether identifiability predicted changes in observers’ sympathy for a secondary victim; b) whether sympathy for a single primary victim is transferred as helping behaviour to a secondary victim and c) whether sympathy mediated the relationship between identifiability and helping behaviour. The sample comprised 130 undergraduate students at a university in Kenya. Their age ranged from 20 to 24 years (M = 22.09). Data were collected using a questionnaire and analysed using SPSS 25. Significant gender differences in helping, significant differences in sympathy and helping by identifiability were found. Sympathy significantly mediated the influence of identifiability on helping. Findings provide support for the role of identifiability and affective reactions in decision making concerning helping indirect victims. Future directions are discussed. Keywords: Helping; identifiable victims; secondary victims; sympathy; vividness.


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