Legitimacy properties and their implications for institutional theory and strategic management

This doctoral thesis seeks to advance our understanding of organizational legitimacy through the analysis of types and properties of legitimacy and of its relation to the concepts of status and reputation. More specifically, this doctoral thesis seeks to contribute to organizational theory and strategic management by (1) reviewing and systematizing legitimacy types discerned in the literature and contrasting legitimacy with related concepts of reputation and status, (2) identifying the properties of legitimacy, and (3) exploring some of the implications of these properties for management practice and strategic management research.;1. Organizational Legitimacy as a Form of Judgment. Through the analysis of legitimacy definitions, types and typologies, and operationalizations, this study first develops an enumerative definition of organizational legitimacy, maps different types of legitimacy discerned in the literature onto the process of legitimacy judgment formation and highlights the fundamental differences between cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy types. This paper then advances a conceptualization of cognitive and sociopolitical types of legitimacy, reputation and status as four different types of judgment that actors can render in respect to an organization and explores some implications of this approach for organizational research, namely the role of social judgments in exchange partner selection and the use of social judgments under conditions of uncertainty.;2. Legitimacy-Based Entry Deterrence in Inter-Population Competition. This paper develops a theory of competitive social norm manipulations and explores the strategies that well-established organizational populations use to build legitimacy-based barriers to entry into their domain. The study develops a typology of legitimacy manipulation strategies that established organizational populations use to prevent, eradicate or palliate the new entrants' impact by: (1) changing the relative importance of legitimacy dimensions, (2) raising the legitimacy threshold and (3) altering perceptions of competitors' performance. Successful legitimacy manipulations are shown to lead to institutional immunization of the incumbents against similar competitive challenges in the future.;3. Defensive Institutional Strategies in Emergent Industries. Through a comparative analysis of two emergent industries in Canada, this study advances a conceptualization of the process of emergence of a new industry from a successful innovative business model, focusing on sequential lines of institutional defense that are available to emergent industries that come under such attacks: (1) keep a low profile; (2) form a trade association; (3) develop an industry code to provide guidelines and member coordination; (4) enforce the code through self-policing; (5) if everything else fails to end the attack, invite the government to impose regulation. Illustrations of the application of these strategies are provided.;The doctoral research is presented in the form of a manuscript-based thesis consisting of three interrelated papers:...