The Quest for Japanese Fascism: A Historiographical Overview

‘Japanese fascism’ is a historiographical construct rather than a historical reality. Whether Japan’s sociopolitical developments in the 1930s and early 1940s can be legitimately and authoritatively defined as ‘fascist’ depends on the triangulation of three axes of analysis: historical reconstructions of institutional, political, social, and ideological processes; historiographical surveys of the palimpsest of interpretations historians have given to this period of Japanese history; and metahistorical analyses of the cognitive legitimacy of the category of ‘fascism’. This essay focuses on the second axis, offering a historical survey of the historiographical debate on ‘Japanese fascism’ worldwide.

How social enterprises gain cognitive legitimacy in the post-pandemic period? Social welfare logic and digital transformation

PurposeThis paper aims to propose a social enterprise legitimation mechanism by combining the established logic and transformational logic to test the validity of the conceptual model.Design/methodology/approachThe authors construct the theoretical framework based on integrating organizational identity theory, attention-based view and collected 128 social enterprises data during the post-pandemic period in China. The authors applied multiple hierarchical regression analysis and mediation analysis to test the research hypothesis.FindingsThe results show that strong organizational identity contributes significantly to the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprise. Besides, we found that social welfare logic and digital transformation can positively mediate the correlation between organizational identity and cognitive legitimacy.Practical implicationsSocial enterprises enhance legitimacy significantly by social welfare logic comparing with commercial logic, which indicates that social enterprises should allocate more internal resources and attention to present the organization's social value through various distributions. More importantly, social enterprises should embrace digital transformation to enhance transparency and efficiency, decrease transaction costs, enlarge organizational social impact to strengthen cognitive legitimacy.Originality/valueThe paper first proposed and empirically tested that digital transformation is an important mechanism to enhance the social enterprise's cognitive legitimacy.

Does it pay to act feminine? A cross-cultural study of gender stereotype endorsement and cognitive legitimacy in the evaluation of new ventures

PurposeDoes gender stereotype endorsement play a role in the customer's cognitive evaluation of new ventures owned by women entrepreneurs? The authors’ cross-cultural study integrates literature on gender stereotype endorsement and cognitive legitimacy to address this research question.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a two-study experimental design and analyze our results by cultural context to test our hypotheses: one drawn from college students in Iran and one from working professionals in the United States.FindingsThe authors’ comparative results suggest that the evaluation of feminine versus masculine characteristics of women entrepreneurs varies depending on the evaluator's (in this case the customer's) endorsement of gender stereotypes and the cultural context. Specifically, the authors found that a new venture owned by a woman entrepreneur who displays feminine characteristics is perceived as more legitimate when the customer endorses feminine stereotypes, regardless of the country.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ research contributes to the literature on cognitive legitimacy and women's entrepreneurship by unveiling the cultural conditions and factors that allow women entrepreneurs to benefit from acting in a stereotypically feminine way. The authors use a binary approach to gender. Future research should extend our findings to also include a non-binary approach.Originality/valueThis study contributes to women's entrepreneurship research by unraveling the implications of gender stereotype endorsement, legitimacy and culture in customer evaluation of ventures owned by women.

Mergers may enhance the legitimacy of community health organisations in neoliberal environments

PurposeComprehensive primary health care (PHC) models are seldom implemented in high income countries, in part due to their contested legitimacy in neoliberal policy environments. This article explores how merging affected the perceived legitimacy of independent community health organisations in Victoria, Australia, in providing comprehensive PHC services.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal follow-up study (2–3 years post-merger) of two amalgamations among independent community health organisations from the state of Victoria, Australia, was conducted. This article explores the perceived effects of merging on (1) the pragmatic, normative and cognitive legitimacy of studied organisations and (2) the collective legitimacy of these organisations in Victoria's health care system. Data were collected through 19 semi-structured interviews with key informants and subjected to template and thematic analyses.FindingsMerging enabled individual organisations to gain greater overall legitimacy as regional providers of comprehensive PHC services and thus retain some capacity to operationalise a social model of health. Normative legitimacy was most enhanced by merging, through acquisition of a large organisational size and adoption of business practices favoured by neoliberal norms. However, mergers may have destabilised the already contested cognitive legitimacy of community health services as a group of organisations and as a comprehensible state-wide platform of service delivery.Practical implicationsOver-reliance on individual organisational behaviour to maintain the legitimacy of comprehensive PHC as a model of organising health and social care could lead to inequities in access to such models across communities.Originality/valueThis study shows that organisations can manage their perceived legitimacy in order to ensure the survival of their preferred model of service delivery.

Die kognitive Legitimität aus Kundensicht im Kontext neuer Unternehmen

Customer cognitive legitimacy is an important factor in a new business venture’s survival. Based on an extensive literature review of customer cognitive legitimacy, this book examines the consistent conceptualisation of the concept and its dimensional structure. This consistent conceptualisation facilitates the development of the reliable and valid three-dimensional customer cognitive legitimacy scale in 10 studies. The scale is based on potential customers’ interest in acquiring knowledge about a product and the company responsible for it, their perception of the company’s and the product’s future, and their perception of how competent the company’s managers are.

Legitimizing Disruptive Technology

Previous research demonstrates that actors seek acceptance of innovations during the diffusion and adoption process, but exactly what kind of acceptance they seek and how they go about obtaining this remains unclear. This study interrogated academic databases and Twitter to identify and analyze research and grey literature concerning blockchain adoption in human resources (HR). The data was analyzed through the theoretical lens of pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy to explore how potential adopters of this innovation conceive its value and alignment with their goals. The results show how pragmatic considerations are emphasized around streamlining current HR processes. Arguments for moral legitimacy are considered far less, while narratives on cognitive legitimacy are absent. The findings also show high levels of conformity around legitimation strategies within the community, with only some evidence of selection and manipulation strategies. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the adoption and diffusion of blockchain in the HR sector.

Repairing legitimacy through discourses: insights from the Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel scandal

Purpose This study aims to explore how corporate discourses enact legitimation strategies aimed at repairing pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995) after a scandal involving sustainability, namely, the Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel scandal. Design/methodology/approach By drawing on the discursive nature of legitimacy, this study conducts a critical discourse analysis to identify how the scandal is depicted and which semantic, grammatical and lexical features characterise discourses. It then relates discourses and their features to legitimation strategies that help repair diverse types of legitimacy. Findings To repair pragmatic legitimacy, discourses on a few actors and processes enact strategies of creating monitors and avoiding panic. Such discourses include grammatical features only. Discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of apology, trust and integrity aim to repair moral legitimacy. Enriched with grammatical and lexical features, they mobilise disassociation, excuse, justify and restructure strategies. Discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of corporate qualities, history and future strategy help repair cognitive legitimacy by enacting an avoiding panic strategy. Grammatical, lexical and semantic features characterise such discourses. Research limitations/implications The study reveals the potentials of critical discourse analysis to bring out from texts practical modes of communicating, and specifically those discourses and features of discourses that serve legitimacy purposes. Originality/value This study offers insights into the connection among discourses, relegitimation strategies and legitimacy types by combining the discursive nature of legitimacy with critical discourse analysis. It also contributes to the growing literature on how organisations face the legitimacy challenges raised by scandals involving sustainability.

Managing legitimacy following loss of human life: Loblaw and Rana Plaza

Purpose This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi workers. Design/methodology/approach This article draws on Suchman’s (1995) comprehensive legitimacy typology to interpret Loblaw’s disclosures about the collapse in both mass media coverage of the tragedy and the company’s quarterly, annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Findings Loblaw worked on many fronts to secure stakeholders’ support in the aftermath of the fatal incident. Through their social disclosures, Loblaw simultaneously managed exchange, dispositional, consequential, procedural, structural, personal and cognitive legitimacy, striving to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incident, the company was still conforming to its social contract. Practical implications This research operationalizes all aspects of Suchman’s legitimacy typology in the context of social reporting. In particular, the paper further develops the concept of cognitive legitimacy. This should be of benefit to other CSR researchers. Social implications The loss of human life during business operations is one of the most terrible events an organization can face. Corporate activities leading to loss of human life are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Stakeholders are likely to disapprove such activities and reconsider their support, which can threaten the survival of the organization. It is thus of utmost importance to understand the strategies used by corporate managers in their attempt to secure ongoing stakeholder support. Originality/value This paper innovates by focusing specifically on social disclosures about a negative event. In so doing, it also contributes to a small, but important, literature within CSR research that examines incidents resulting in the loss of human life. The paper adapts and applies Suchman’s legitimacy framework to interpret social reporting in response to a specific instance of loss of life, the Rana Plaza building collapse. Finally, this paper mobilizes the notion of cognitive dissonance to further develop Suchman’s notion of cognitive legitimacy.