合法化理论：组织合法性的概念与理论发展、主要类型、合法化话语策略、合法化策略与企业环境责任表达

The study examines when and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity (high vs. low) leads to higher perceived organizational reputation. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the study also theorizes the mediating role of perceived organizational legitimacy and the moderating role of CSR motives (strategic vs. altruistic). Two studies, using a 2 × 2 between‐subject experimental design, are empirically tested using analysis of variance and Process macro moderated mediation analysis. Findings affirm that high CSR intensity leads to higher perceived organizational reputation via perceived organizational legitimacy. Additionally, the study demonstrates that altruistic CSR motives significantly strengthen the relationship between CSR intensity and positive stakeholder perceptions, compared with strategically driven motives. This finding offers essential empirical evidence regarding the impact of CSR implementation, shedding light on the psychological processes that stakeholders engage in when evaluating an organization's legitimacy and reputation. By focusing on how these cognitive assessments are formed, the research deepens our understanding of the nuanced role CSR motives play in shaping stakeholder perceptions.

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Abstract This research addresses the role of organizational language in the establishment of legitimacy from the perspective of New Institutional Theory. Several conceptual and methodical contributions have been made. First, by pairing cultural-cognitive legitimacy with phenomenological institutionalism and socio-political legitimacy with social organizational institutionalism, we have proposed a new way of classifying legitimacy. Second, we made connections between language strategies of organizations and cultural-cognitive and socio-political legitimacy. Finally, by re-categorizing language strategies aimed at legitimacy, we have provided a framework that is applicable in studying the relationship between different language strategies and legitimacy. Using this framework, we conducted an empirical study in which we analyzed the press releases of five major Turkish business groups. It was found that their language strategies were generally similar and mostly aimed at socio-political legitimacy.

Purpose COVID-19 induced uncertainty in the firms’ business transactions, financial markets and product-market competition, causing a severe organizational legitimacy crisis. Using the organizational legitimacy perspective and agency theory, this paper aims to study the relationship between prior corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, monitoring cost (MC) and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a quarterly panel (16,924 firm-quarter observations from 61 countries for CSR and 53,345 firm-quarter observations from 55 countries for MC) for 14 quarters from January 2018 to June 2021. This study uses panel fixed-effect regression models to estimate the effect of CSR activities and MC (measured as audit fees) on firm performance during the COVID-19 period. Findings This study finds a U-shaped relationship between CSR and firm performance. This relationship is strengthened during COVID-19. In contrast, this study finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between firm MC and firm performance. However, this relationship is weakened during the pandemic. Originality/value This study contributes to theory and practice on maintaining organizational legitimacy and reducing agency costs during the pandemic. This study shows that firms’ prior legitimacy-gaining practices, such as CSR activities and MC, provide an opportunity to increase firm value. To balance agency costs and legitimacy benefits, firm managers also need to identify the optimal level of CSR activities and MC.

The relationship between institutional logics and organizational legitimacy remains largely unaddressed in organizational theory and management research. We explore how individual evaluators primed with a particular institutional logic react to organizational signals sent by a firm's product/service pricing and by its engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. In three experimental studies, we identify how the activation of a market logic or a family logic in evaluators’ minds moderates the effect of pricing and CSR engagement signals on their judgments of legitimacy of a firm, as well as on their behavioral intentions. An unexpected finding from our study was that, while participants primed with the family logic reacted positively to a CSR engagement signal sent by the firm but remained indifferent to a market-based premium-pricing signal, those primed with the market logic reacted positively to both premium-pricing and CSR engagement signals, suggesting that CSR engagement forms part of their understanding of the market logic.

In recent years, the evaluator’s perspective of legitimacy theory appears to be a hot topic. We provide an overview by conducting a bibliometric review in this field. Based on the data during 1995 to 2020 from the Web of Science Core Collection database, this study investigates the present status, the evolution of the evaluator’s perspective, thematic change, and intellectual turning points via HistCite, CiteSpace, etc. Results demonstrate that the evaluator’s perspective is experiencing exponential growth. Suchman MC is the most cited author; While Palazzo G is the most productive. Academy of Management Review ranks first in citation, and Journal of Business Ethics is the most productive. The University of Lausanne enjoys the highest citation, and Copenhagen Business School publishes the most articles. The USA ranks first in terms of citation and publication. Author collaboration network is not close, while institutional collaboration and national collaboration networks are relatively dense. Highly-cited articles show the evolution of the evaluator’s perspective, and five evolution paths are found. The main areas are concentrated on signaling theory, business ethics, CSR communication, reputation, environmental disclosure, etc; 14 references act as intellectual turning points. The findings provide a panorama for researchers interested in this topic and help to better understand future research direction.

The society has expectations from every business organization in their environment(Guthrie, Cuganesan& Ward, 2006). These expectations may be in form of value or interest of the stakeholders in the society which are embedded in corporate social responsibility(Noah, 2017). When these expectations– strategically improvised for in the organizational operations – are not met or are perceived inadequate or inappropriate, the stakeholders lose confidence the organization and that may threaten the existence, survival and the performance of the organization(Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975; Guthrie et al., 2006).Newman, Rand, Tarp & Trifkovic(2016)submit that for a firm to survive, such firm has to develop its CSR policy, level of CSR which can lead to the firm‟s closure if not done.

ABSTRACT Drawing from neo-institutionalism and public relations theory, this study examined to what extent corporate diplomacy builds on public relations to identify and respond to societal expectations emerging from a company’s host country environment, which can result in organizational legitimacy. Based on in-depth interviews (N = 25) with public relations executives in the United Arab Emirates, our findings imply that companies engage in corporate diplomacy to align with governmental demands while simultaneously attempting to meet internal expectations originating from employees and corporate values. The interviews resulted in the identification and description of five corporate diplomacy modes and a model describing corporate diplomacy-legitimacy, highlighting the role played by relationship cultivation and culture in gaining organizational legitimacy through corporate diplomacy. Consequently, our study provides a framework to explain the societal role of public relations in building organizational legitimacy through relationship cultivation.

Managerialism is a concept of considerable interest for nonprofit scholars, particularly as it relates to the abilities of social value-driven nonprofit organizations to perform mission-related activities. This article addresses this question by framing the operationalization of managerialism within social justice-oriented nonprofits as a process aimed at achieving and maintaining organizational legitimacy. Data from in-depth interviews with staff members at three social justice nonprofit organizations are presented. A lens of interest divergence is employed to analyze the impact of this process on the mission-driven goals of the organizations, as well as the ways in which managerialism may inadvertently support the maintenance of social inequity and disparity.

Abstract With the aim of delving into the legitimacy formation mechanisms used by communities to make judgements about project organizations, this research studied the local community and surrounding environment of four oil extraction projects located in three developing countries. The results of the cross-case analysis suggest that communities' negative perceptions from government and media can influence their judgement of organizational behaviour. Additionally, this research proposes that local communities' anticipation of the consequences of protesting against the organization can make them decide not to take any action. According to institutional theory, when community individuals arrive at a legitimacy verdict about an organization, their future perceptions will mainly be influenced by this decision rather than conscious consideration of the conditions. Accordingly, this research recommends that organizations aiming to recover their reputation need to adopt compensation activities with a substantial influence on the improvement of conditions. It is only in such conditions that communities will consciously evaluate organizational legitimacy. Trivial changes in organizational behaviour will only result in adding new evidences in support of the illegitimacy of organizations.

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In recent years, more and more scholars have begun to explore the influence of institutional factors on the production and operation of the organization, and formed a new research perspective—institutional basis, and organizational legitimacy is the “core concept” of the new institutionalism theory. This article through the domestic and foreign related literature, systematically expounded the basic issues of organizational legitimacy, research perspective, dimension division and so on, in order to deepen knowledge and understanding of the organization’s legitimacy.

Many organizations throughout the world utilize community based conservation (CBC) strategies to incorporate rural communities into conservation efforts. One key component to the success of these strategies is to gain trust within the communities which reside in the vicinity of the targeted areas for conservation. The research reported here introduces the concept of organizational legitimacy into the realm of CBC strategy by proposing how dimensions of legitimacy (pragmatic, moral, and cognitive) are related to community trust and attitudes. Employing institutional theory, this paper proposes that (i) pragmatic and moral legitimacy produce trust, (ii) trust positively influences cognitive legitimacy, and (iii) cognitive legitimacy influences attitudes. The Missouri Botanical Garden’s (MBG) CBC efforts in Madagascar’s Ambalabe and Mahabo communities served to empirically examine these propositions. The survey yielded 1 01 usable responses from community members in Mahabo and Ambalabe. A structural model was estimated to test the propositions and the results provided support for the premise that organizational legitimacy is needed to gain trust and influence favorable attitudes toward the organization. Since CBC strategies rely on trust between organizations and communities, the findings of this research provide implications for organizations seeking to implement CBC strategies. The findings do so by implying that in order to build trust with communities, organizations should first establish legitimacy, which not only helps build trust, but also indirectly affects attitudes toward the organization and its activities.

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Makerspaces are community-based design and fabrication spaces that enable the development of local solutions. Although the number of makerspaces in Africa is increasing, it is not well understood how these makerspaces deal with legitimacy challenges. This study aims to illuminate the process by which a newly established makerspace in Ethiopia seeks to gain, maintain and defend its legitimacy as a site for local innovation and production. It introduces Actor-Network Theory as a novels lens to study organizational legitimacy. The Actor-Network of BiT Makerspace in Bahir Dar is analyzed over a three-year period to show how a makerspace can establish itself as an Obligatory Passage Point via a networked legitimization process. This study enriches organizational theory on legitimacy, by introducing a new theoretical perspective that presents a procedural view of legitimacy that is continuous and bi-directional. Practically, this study identifies several strategies to support the legitimacy of makerspaces in Africa.

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ABSTRACT By applying institutional theory in retail and COVID-19 settings, this paper investigates the impact of legitimacy dimensions on customer loyalty, considering the moderating effect of the perceived COVID-19 threat. The data collected by a consumer survey in Japan and Croatia were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. The results from both samples reveal that moral and cognitive legitimacy are critical loyalty drivers. The perceived COVID-19 threat moderated the relationship between cognitive legitimacy and loyalty. The study also reveals some differences between the countries. The impact of pragmatic legitimacy is significant only in Croatia, while perceived threat negatively moderates the relationship between moral legitimacy and loyalty only in Japan. The study provides recommendations for managers on how to gain loyalty through actions supporting legitimacy.

Abstract This study expands the Inter-Institutional Gaps (IIGs) framework to conceptualize the legitimacy associated with different types of ecological knowledge (e.g., scientific, traditional and local) used in natural resource governance. We draw on primary qualitative data, and document analysis to examine a case of inland fisheries management in the north-eastern floodplain of Bangladesh. We posit that the pragmatic, moral, cognitive, and regulative legitimacy for different types of ecological knowledge are repeatedly reevaluated by rule-makers and resource users in the process of rule-devising. Results show that inter-institutional gaps may be perpetuated when formal rules do not sufficiently consider traditional and local ecological knowledge. While it is widely proposed that systematically incorporating different knowledge types can better address local-national policy problems, this study underscores that the source of legitimacies for different knowledge types often differs across formal and informal institutional actors. Recognizing the differences is critical to fishers’ resource management.

This article explores the discoveries related to organizational legitimacy, focusing on its three key types: pragmatic, moral, and cognitive. It examines how perceived value plays a crucial role in the generation of legitimacy and its direct impact on attitudinal loyalty. The study, based on a survey of 156 members of the Professional Association of Economists of Seville, demonstrates the significant influence of perceived value and legitimacy on the three dimensions of organizational legitimacy and attitudinal loyalty. Based on the findings, the paper recommends a management approach that emphasizes perceived value to reinforce legitimacy, which in turn strengthens loyalty. Another important contribution of our work is that it fills a gap in the literature related to professional association membership loyalty and its antecedents. Further research is suggested to investigate the causes and effects of legitimacy in different organizational contexts.

Abstract Globalization, rankings, and the decrease of public funding have created a highly competitive environment for public universities. Internal and external stakeholders increasingly demand better results in term of research, teaching, knowledge transfer, employability, and community outreach. In this new landscape, intangible assets such as reputation and legitimacy are key factors for gaining a sustained competitive advantage. And yet, here remains a lack of clarity about these variables and their relationships. This research aims to increase our understanding of the field by measuring how reputation, by way of its influence on legitimacy, can create a sustained competitive advantage for public universities. We measure reputation and legitimacy by surveying 509 professors from 47 different Spanish universities, considering pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy types and analyze reputation in terms of performance, innovation, citizenship, services, governance, and workplace climate. According to faculty members, a university’s reputation has a significative and positive effect on its legitimacy.

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ABSTRACT Globalizing forces have both transformed the higher education sector and made it increasingly homogenous. Growing similarities among universities have been attributed to isomorphic pressures to ensure and/or enhance legitimacy by imitating higher education institutions that are perceived as successful internationally, particularly universities that are highly ranked globally (Cantwell & Kauppinen, 2014; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In this study, we compared the strategic plans of 78 high-ranked, low-ranked, and unranked universities in 33 countries in 9 regions of the world. In analyzing the plans of these 78 universities, the study explored patterns of similarity and difference in universities’ strategic positioning according to Suchman’s (1995) 3 types of legitimacy: cognitive, pragmatic, and moral. We found evidence of stratified university strategies in a global higher education landscape that varied by institutional status. In offering a corrective to neoinstitutional theory, we suggest that patterns of globalization are mediated by status-based differences in aspirational behavior (Riesman, 1958) and “old institutional” forces (Stinchcombe, 1997) that contribute to differently situated universities pursuing new paths in seeking to build external legitimacy.

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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.

How to deal with the recycling of waste drugs, reduce the waste of social resources and environmental pollution, and promote the sustainable development of society and ecology, has become a social concern. But so far, due to the lack of the legitimacy of reverse logistics of waste drugs, pharmaceutical enterprises are faced with many obstacles to realize the business. Based on legitimacy theory, this study adopts panel discussion to identify three types of legitimacy: cognitive, pragmatic and moral, and their importance in the implementation of reverse logistics. We further analyze how pharmaceutical enterprises acquire these legitimacies. The study found that moral legitimacy is the most important and should be acquired first, and then cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy.

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This research aims to examine the influence of reputation on legitimacy. The population in this study were Senior Lecturers in Accounting Study Programs in all Indonesian Universities. Sampling in this research used the technique of distributing questionnaires directly to Senior Accounting Lecturers in the form of a Google form. Data collection used a sample of 42 Senior Accounting Lecturers from 37 Universities in Indonesia using purposive sampling. This research considers pragmatic, moral, and cognitive types of legitimacy, and analyzes reputation in relation to performance, innovation, social responsibility, service, governance, and workplace climate. According to lecturers, a university's reputation has a positive influence on its legitimacy. Data processing and testing uses structural modeling with the SmartPLS version 3 system.

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ABSTRACT This study explores how four different types of environmental reporting regulations affect reporting practices. Accounting Act requirements, accounting standard requirements, accounting standard recommendations, and no regulation/voluntary disclosure are associated with different levels of reporting obligations. Disclosures made by enterprises subject to regulations are compared with those of enterprises that are not. There are separate regression models for each type of regulation. The sample consists of 235 enterprises from the private and public sectors. Content analysis is used to measure environmental disclosure. Enterprises subject to regulations report significantly more types of the information content required by law than other enterprises, which is in line with the higher regulatory legitimacy risk. There is no such difference in disclosure between the two groups of enterprises for the information required and recommended by the accounting standard. This may suggest that pragmatic, cognitive, and moral legitimacy issues outweigh the regulatory legitimacy risk for these types of information, or that legitimacy risks are generally low. Enforcement of regulations will increase the regulatory risk. For information that is voluntary for all enterprises to disclose, enterprises that are not subject to any regulations report significantly more types of information than those that are. This result is not in line with predictions made from any of the four types of legitimacy. Some alternative explanations are discussed. Since regulatory regimes may include several types of means, the main contribution is the comparison of four types of regulations within the same regime, as opposed to analysing only one type of regulation at a time such as in the extant literature. The study also explores different types of legitimacy, and addresses the lack of research on environmental reporting in the public sector.

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This study investigates how lawmakers legitimise their positions on legalising same-sex marriage in Japanese parliamentary debates. All speeches containing the word 同性婚/同性結婚 ‘same-sex marriage’ were obtained and divided into two corpora depending on whether the speaker agreed with its legalisation. The keywords from both corpora were extracted by comparison. A corpus-assisted method identified salient legitimation strategies. Supporters of same-sex marriage appeal to the results of polls, court rulings, opinions of other G7 member countries, and the alleged influence of religious rights to legitimise their position. Conversely, opponents of same-sex marriage highlight potential threats to traditional heteropatriarchal family structures and react negatively to pressures from other G7 member countries, emphasising Japan’s historical and religious context regarding homosexuality. The findings suggest the importance of more general discussions on human rights to move beyond the discursive framework of cultural differences.

This study examines the use of environmental disclosure as a strategic tool to manage legitimacy crises in a mining company, adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the main methodology. Focusing on a case of environmental disaster, this research reveals how corporate narratives can be manipulated to minimize responsibility and reinforce a positive public image despite operational failures. The analysis found that the communication strategies employed tended to prioritize maintaining organizational legitimacy over a genuine ethical commitment to sustainability. Furthermore, this study proposes a theoretical model for evaluating environmental disclosure based on Kant's categorical imperative and Hans Jonas' principle of co‐responsibility, suggesting that only through the adoption of rigorous ethical practices can the continuous trust of stakeholders be ensured. This study contributes to the debate on ethics in environmental disclosure, emphasizing the need for communicative practices that truly reflect the values of social responsibility and sustainability.

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how fast fashion companies attempt to build legitimacy for their actions through social media marketing communications. The data are sourced from Lindex’s and H&M’s Instagram posts to explore how sustainability claims are related to the discursive legitimation strategies of authorization, rationalization, moral evaluation, and mythopoesis. In our critical discourse analysis, we show how visual and verbal components participate in the construction of these discursive legitimation strategies. Our findings allow us to advance discussions of fast fashion as a market institution by critically addressing the role of fast fashion companies and the ways in which they aim to legitimize this unsustainable business model by harnessing sustainability claims. By analyzing visual and verbal components as a part of the discursive construction of legitimacy, our research adds empirical detail to conceptualizations of the mediating role of social media in perpetuating the harmful practices of the fashion industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020 in Romania determined companies to adapt their communication. Through a quantitative content analysis, this work presents the topics that were covered in CSR communication by three food retail companies in Romania and the legitimation strategies that were used in the CSR discourse from their pandemic press releases. The research focuses on 21 press releases from Kaufland Romania, Lidl Romania and Carrefour Romania food retailers’ websites, issued between March 2020 and May 2020. The results show that the most frequent communication topics of the three organizations was that of actions for health institutions and patients. Likewise, it also shows that rationalization legitimation was the most used strategy by Lidl and Kaufland, the companies presenting the means by which they carried out CSR actions and the effects of these actions. Moral legitimation was the most used strategy by Carrefour, the company assigning evaluative attributes to the pandemic period or to the affected people.

Abstract Negative social and environmental consequences caused by corporate activities (e.g., workplace incidents, oil spills, and product-related accidents) can significantly affect the success and survival of a business. When there is bad news to report, how will companies handle the information disclosure? This paper examines discursive strategies UK and Chinese Fortune 500 companies used for communicating negative aspects in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Based on 50 UK and 50 Chinese CSR reports, the study shows how companies legitimize the bad news via the strategies of Denial, Deflection, Mitigation and Admission. Two major differences were observed in the legitimation efforts made by Chinese and UK companies: i) almost all legitimation strategies were more frequently found in UK reports, and ii) UK reports mobilized a wider range of linguistic and rhetorical resources for realizing the strategies. The paper discusses the results by considering cultural, social, and organizational factors that may shape CSR discourse in the two countries. Findings add to the understanding of crisis communication and image repair strategies used by large corporations and the genre of CSR reporting in different cultures.

This article proposes a typology of strategies and tactics of legitimation. The linguistic interpretation of the concepts of “legitimacy” and “legitimation”, developed in the article, is based on the following theoretical sources: on the notions of legitimacy and discursive mechanisms for its maintenance, established in the humanities; to the work of linguists studying the discursive mechanisms of legitimation in line with critical discourse analysis (CDA); to the works of domestic discourses, which analyze the means of ensuring credibility and trust in the discourse (V.B. Kashkin, N.S. Ryadovaya, A.A. Malyshev). Following the CDA experts, the author understands legitimation as discursive practices (genres, strategies and tactics) of ensuring a positive attitude of society to a social actor and its discourse. The material used was 120 corporate texts posted on the websites of companies, in corporate publications, in image booklets, and image and information materials of companies posted in the media were also used. A pragmalinguistic analysis of the texts of commercial and state structures allowed the author of the article to identify the key strategies of legitimation, describe tactics, language means of implementing one of the basic strategies of legitimation – the strategy of positive self-presentation. In general, the analysis of the texts showed that the CD uses two main strategies to ensure legitimation: the strategy of creating images of loyal target audiences (external and internal) and the strategy of building a positive image of the corporation itself. The article focuses on the second strategy, on the tactics and language means of its implementation. A wide range of identified tactics testifies to the importance of the legitimation process for corporations. It was also found that most of the texts providing legitimation relate to PR texts, which allows us to conclude that discursive PR practices are standard ways to ensure legitimation.

This study investigates the ideological legitimation strategies embedded in English academic discourse on language standardization, with a focus on sociolinguistics textbooks. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the research applies Theo van Leeuwen’s (2007) model of legitimation, which categorizes legitimation into authorization, moralization, and rationalization. The analysis draws on carefully selected textbook extracts, chosen based on authorial credibility, publication by high-ranking academic presses, educational recognition, and recency. Using qualitative discourse analysis alongside quantitative frequency calculations, the study identifies and interprets the use of twelve subtypes of legitimation. Findings show a dominance of impersonal authorization and means-oriented rationalization (each 15%), reflecting a tendency to justify language ideologies through institutional norms and technical procedures. Expert authority and moral evaluation (12.5% each) are also prevalent, reinforcing scholarly ethos and ethical judgments. The discourse exhibits a blend of descriptive neutrality and normative positioning, challenging prescriptivist ideologies while simultaneously legitimizing progressive academic values. Ultimately, the study highlights the ideological nature of even those texts that aim for objective analysis, showing that critiques of standard language ideologies are themselves constructed through strategic legitimation. The paper concludes that sociolinguistics textbooks serve not only as educational tools but also as vehicles for ideological negotiation.

Since the escalation of the Sino-U.S. trade dispute, the “China Threat” narrative has increasingly challenged the legitimacy of Chinese companies in global markets. Building upon growing scholarship on legitimation in digital contexts, this study focuses on how the public actively evaluates and contests institutional narratives online. In 2024, the U.S. government initiated the “Chinese Car Threat” narrative, which was disseminated through mainstream media and sparked extensive online discussions. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis approach to analyse legitimation strategies in official statements, media reports, and online comments, the analysis shows that while official and media “national security” discourses employ group polarization and threat proximization strategies to construct a perceived threat from Chinese automobiles, public discourse in the examined comments primarily demonstrates active resistance through normalization, de-moralization and de-rationalization strategies. The results illustrate how legitimation can operate as an interactive argumentative process in digital spaces, offering insights into the complexity of public legitimacy judgments when citizens engage with official and media narratives. The findings offer insights for organizations on how to counter legitimacy challenges with public-aligned narratives and highlight for policymakers the limitations of threat-based narratives in digital contexts, where online contestation impacts policy legitimacy and socio-economic viability.

Following the first coronavirus case reported to the World Health Organization in Wuhan in 2019 and the ensuing city-wide lockdown that was imposed, many people attempted to leave the city, culminating in a vigorous discourse on the dominant Chinese microblogging site, Weibo. This study seeks to examine how online participants discursively delegitimated and legitimated people who left Wuhan before the lockdown. Weibo posts with the hashtag #逃离武汉 (‘Fleeing Wuhan’) were collected, and delegitimation and legitimation strategies deployed by users were identified. My findings reveal that the delegitimators exploited moral evaluation and impersonal authority to highlight the construed unethicality and shamelessness of people who left Wuhan, whereas the legitimators used an array of strategies, including explanation and definition, to normalize their intentions and counter linguistic hostility. These findings also provide implications vis-à-vis the clustering of delegitimation strategies as well as their linkages with emotional appeals in online discourse.

The role of digital media platforms as societal actors has been increasingly brought to the fore in recent years. We have also grown to understand how platforms foster actors and media formats not motivated by liberal and democratic norms. Critical scholarship has pointed out the role of platforms in amplifying extreme content and misinformation, allowing for the manipulation of political processes and communication, and intervening in the processes of political communication more broadly. In this study, we focus on the discursive strategies adopted by the platforms to publicize and justify their actions related to electoral and political communication on their services. We ask, how do platform companies articulate elections as a context through which they discursively construct their role and legitimacy as major actors in society? Using a large dataset of corporate blogs from ten platform companies (N=27,616, n=413, years 2006-2022) we show a shift from an opportunity-focused discourse that promotes participation, digital democracy, and politician-citizen interaction to a more defensive discourse stressing companies’ responsible attitude to elections, as evidenced by their transparency efforts, advertising control, fact-checking initiatives, and strategic partnerships. Our findings demonstrate an institutionalization of discourses among the platform companies and highlight their reactive response strategies from feature development to corporate legitimation strategies. The platforms strategically mobilize the empowering participation-focused discourses typically used to describe social media to rebuild their legitimacy and position them as proactive agents in society.

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The current research endeavor extends scholarship on political satire and digital memes proposing a more nuanced semio-cognitive analytical framework for the innovative political image macro memes pertinent to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019). Premised on Martynyuk and Melescchenko’s (2021) conceptualization of metaphtonymy and van Leeuwen’s (2007) (de)-legitimation strategies, a corpus of 159 image macro meme instances from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s (January 2016 to December 2019) has been examined to show how the semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump and his administration is materialized through creative meme-inherent metaphtonymies. Key findings include the dominance of four meme-specific metaphtonymic patterns. In tandem, the overlapping semio-discursive de-legitimation strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoeisis are metaphtonymically encoded in the image macro memes of the show’s monologue to: (a) function as highly medium-specific expressions that respond to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates, and (b) provide a timely (and even reactionary) response to political debates, creating a negative view of Donald Trump to reduce his legitimacy as the US president.

The article discusses (de)legitimation strategies of Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the Confederation Liberty and Independence, a Polish coalition of right-wing movements. The success of the formation appears to be in line with that of other European (far) right-wing parties, which have become politically relevant in recent decades. Despite the Confederation’s growing position in European politics, there is a paucity of research devoted to the party. The present paper attempts to bridge the gap by focusing on Bosak’s 2020 presidential campaign and the politician’s use of Twitter. In order to investigate Bosak’s discourse in detail, corpus linguistic methods were used. As they allow the researcher to work on large samples of data, Bosak’s tweets were investigated at both qualitative and quantitative levels. The results suggest that the candidate focused on legitimizing Catholicism and conservative ideas. At the same time, he delegitimised the left and LGBT communities, framing the presidential campaign as a clash between the conservative order.

Introduction: Validity is frequently conceptualized in health professions education (HPE) assessment as an argument that supports the interpretation and uses of data. However, previous work has shown that many validity scholars believe argument and argumentation are relatively lacking in HPE. To better understand HPE’s discourse around argument and argumentation with regard to assessment validity, the authors explored the discourses present in published HPE manuscripts. Methods: The authors used a bricolage of critical discourse analysis approaches to understand how the language in influential peer reviewed manuscripts has shaped HPE’s understanding of validity arguments and argumentation. The authors used multiple search strategies to develop a final corpus of 39 manuscripts that were seen as influential in how validity arguments are conceptualized within HPE. An analytic framework drawing on prior research on Argumentation Theory was used to code manuscripts before developing themes relevant to the research question. Results: The authors found that the elaboration of argument and argumentation within HPE’s validity discourse is scant, with few components of Argumentation Theory (such as intended audience) existing within the discourse. The validity as an argument discourse was legitimized via authorization (reference to authority), rationalization (reference to institutionalized action), and mythopoesis (narrative building). This legitimation has cemented the validity as an argument discourse in HPE despite minimal exploration of what argument and argumentation are. Discussion: This study corroborates previous work showing the dearth of argument and argumentation present within HPE’s validity discourse. An opportunity exists to use Argumentation Theory in HPE to better develop validation practices that support use of argument.

When governments introduce controversial policies that many citizens disapprove of, officeholders increasingly use discursive legitimation strategies in their public communication to ward off blame. In this paper, we contribute to the study of blame avoidance in government social media communication by exploring how corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to identify three types of common legitimations: self-defensive appeals to (1) personal authority of policymakers, (2) impersonal authority of rules or documents and (3) goals or effects of policies. We use a specialised corpus of tweets by the Brexit department of the British government (42,618 words) which we analyse both qualitatively and quantitatively. We demonstrate how the analysis of lexical bundles that characterise each type of legitimation might provide a new avenue for identifying the presence, characteristics and uses of these legitimations in larger datasets.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are important non-financial disclosures that provide insights into an enterprise’s commitment to social and environmental responsibilities. With the escalation of global environmental challenges, the focus on the disclosure of environmental responsibility information within CSR reports has intensified. As CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) is an environmentally sensitive corporation, this study investigates the legitimation strategies utilized in the environmental discourse of the CNPC’s English CSR Report of 2022, aiming to understand how CNPC constructs its legitimacy in sustainable development for international audience. The findings reveal that: (1) five principal legitimation strategies are employed—authorization, moralization, rationalization, mythopoesis, and altruism—with rationalization as the dominant strategy, representing 65.45% of all cases; (2) these strategies are grounded in diverse sources of legitimacy, such as collective authority and moral values, and are manifested through distinct lexical and syntactic choices; (3) these legitimation strategies constructs an authoritative and credible corporate eco-friendly image for CNPC. These findings contribute to the understanding of legitimation strategies in institutional environmental discourse and offer practical implications for enterprises aiming to enhance their international reputations in sustainable development and facilitate global expansion.

Purpose The latest developments in the football industry, the commodification of sport, the excessive focus on profitability and the limited attention to social and environmental aspects have caused a legitimation crisis for football clubs. According to the legitimacy theory, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure represents a tool capable of allowing the construction or repair of legitimacy. This study, in line with this theory, aims to analyse the amount of CSR disclosure provided by football clubs and the determinants, related to visibility, of the level of information provided. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a manual content analysis on the corporate websites of the 80 football clubs that qualified for the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League group stages for the 2019–2020 year to measure the level of CSR disclosure and subsequently a regression analysis to examine the impact of visibility on the amount of information provided. Findings Results reveal that football clubs still disclose relatively little information about sustainability issues, and that sports performance visibility, human capital visibility and social media visibility positively affect the amount of information that football clubs disclose. Originality/value This study extends the horizons of CSR disclosure to the football industry which is still little explored in the academic literature. Furthermore, it extends the scope of legitimacy theory, showing how CSR disclosure can be a means for football clubs to obtain or repair legitimacy. Furthermore, this study extends the list of determinants of the level of CSR disclosure, showing that visibility can influence the amount of CSR information.

This study examines the influence of ecological responsibility, legitimation, and competitiveness on the intention of Taiwanese SMEs to adopt carbon reduction practices. It further investigates whether these intentions translate into actual implementation and explores the moderating role of employee green efficacy in this relationship. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of Taiwanese SMEs. A total of 326 valid responses were analyzed using regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings reveal that ecological responsibility is the most significant predictor of adoption intention, followed by competitiveness, while legitimation exerts the weakest effect. Employee green efficacy significantly moderates the relationship between intention and implementation, increasing the likelihood of action. These findings advance the literature on SME environmental strategy by extending Bansal and Roth's ecological responsiveness model through the integration of the theory of planned behavior alongside institutional and social cognitive perspectives. By highlighting the role of employee green efficacy in strengthening the translation of intentions into action, the study offers a theoretically enriched understanding of how cognitive and institutional mechanisms jointly drive SME carbon reduction. Practically, the results provide actionable insights for policymakers and SME managers seeking to facilitate effective transitions toward reduced carbon emissions.

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of firms’ corporate social responsibility commitment (CSR) on the quality of their environmental reporting. The proactive approach of the legitimacy theory is retained to formulate our expectations. We develop a multidimensional content analysis index used to apprehend environmental disclosure faithfulness dimensions. The variance analysis is applied to these indicators classified according to the variables of CSR commitment for a sample of French industrial firms listed in the SBF120 index. The study confirms the proactive approach of legitimacy. It provides empirical evidence in the French context that firms use environmental reporting for accountability with a substantial legitimation strategy. Indeed, most CSR committed sampled firms disclose in their annual reports more comprehensive mandatory environmental information and more abundant and precise voluntary information than others. They also tend to introduce more statements to justify the credibility of their disclosures than less committed firms.

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Although cross‐sector collaborations drive innovation, organizational policies as legitimation signals attracting such collaborations remain unexplored. This study examines the mediating role of environmental partnerships between organizational policies and environmental innovation. Using panel data (2014–2024) comprising 3372 firm‐year observations from 454 consumer sector firms across 45 countries, we employ the causal mediation framework with fixed‐effects regression to analyze human rights‐oriented, consumer‐oriented, and market‐oriented policies. Results reveal that environmental partnerships mediate the effects of human rights‐oriented and consumer‐oriented policies but not market‐oriented policies, and that this mediated pathway operates within consumer discretionary but not consumer staples firms. These findings demonstrate that organizational policies function as legitimation signals that attract environmental partners by communicating social responsibility commitments to proximate stakeholders rather than market compliance. We contribute to the environmental innovation literature by integrating legitimacy theory with the institutional approach, revealing that institutional conformity, although necessary, requires stakeholder proximity to effectively mobilize partnership‐mediated innovation.

Abstract This study explores strategic trade-offs between corporate tax behaviour and environmental performance disclosure, both important elements of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Tax finances public goods and reduces investor wealth. Corporate strategies may balance such incompatible stakeholder interests through trade-offs across CSR elements. In this empirical study of Norwegian companies, there are no indications of trade-offs between corporate tax aggressiveness (TAG) and mandatory disclosure, in line with stick-to-the-rules/compliant behaviour for both. However, the positive relationship between TAG and voluntary disclosure indicates that strategic trade-offs exist and ensure an acceptable level of legitimacy from different stakeholders overall. Hence, corporate strategies differ for mandatory and voluntary actions, in line with a multidimensional legitimacy risk and legitimation strategy framework.

This study examines the determinants of online sustainability disclosure in the Portuguese public hospital sector, contributing to the growing literature on sustainability disclosure in healthcare organizations from a context that remains largely underexplored. Drawing on a multi‐theoretical framework that integrates Legitimacy Theory, Signaling Theory, Stakeholder Theory, Institutional Theory, and Upper Echelons Theory, the study employs manual content analysis of the official websites of Portuguese hospitals to construct a Sustainability Disclosure Index encompassing environmental, social, and strategy and governance dimensions. The results confirm that Portuguese hospitals are at an incipient stage of sustainability disclosure maturity, with an average disclosure rate of 32.9% and a marked prioritization of social over environmental information, a pattern interpreted as consistent with a predominantly symbolic strategy of legitimation directed at primary civic stakeholders. Regression analysis identifies hospital size, coastal geographic location, and board gender diversity as the primary positive drivers of sustainability disclosure, while financial variables, profitability and indebtedness, and political ideology do not reach statistical significance. These findings suggest that sustainability disclosure in Portuguese hospitals responds more to institutional visibility pressures and governance modernization than to financial incentives or political orientation, reflecting the logic of a centralized public health system in the absence of a mandatory reporting framework. This study makes two distinct contributions: it provides the first systematic empirical evidence on the determinants of sustainability disclosure in the Portuguese hospital sector, extending the geographic scope of a literature so far dominated by Spanish and Italian evidence; and it offers a theoretical contribution that uses Portugal's shared Southern European administrative heritage with Spain and Italy to interpret symbolic legitimation as a structural feature of public healthcare systems under scrutiny but without clear normative guidance, while identifying the degree of health‐system centralization as a boundary condition for the political ideology hypothesis. The study also offers practical recommendations for hospital managers and policymakers seeking to strengthen accountability and embed sustainability into the governance of the National Health Service.

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Responsible management of water resources is critical owing to its effects on the environment and society. This study aims to address customer perceptions of a water utility during a severe environmental crisis that affected northern Italy and aims to deepen the understanding of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), perceived crisis response and corporate reputation. This study draws on legitimacy theory and attribution theory, adopting a quantitative design. In detail, a moderated mediation model is used to investigate the direct effect of CSR on reputation, the mediating effect of perceived crisis response on the relationship between CSR and reputation and the moderating effect of blame attribution on the relationship between CSR and perceived crisis response. In addition, the evolution of the crisis event and its management is traced through the analysis of the water utilities’ sustainability reports published since the beginning of the crisis. The findings show that CSR affects corporate reputation directly and via perceived crisis response. In addition, CSR improves perceived crisis response, especially when an organization is held responsible for a crisis. The analysis of the CSR report allows for understanding the evolution of CSR policies of water utilities, shifting attention from a merely informative role of sustainability disclosure to a more comprehensive approach to perfluoroalkyl substances risks in the struggle of contributing to sustainable development. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed. The findings suggest some managerial implications about the usefulness of adopting CSR for crisis management and, furthermore, the importance of communicating CSR policies to all stakeholders overall – the customers of public utilities. This paper focuses on the relationship between CSR, reputation and blame attribution. Literature on this topic is still scarce overall in the field of public utilities. Furthermore, this study is relevant because it faces one of the major European environmental crises that affected the water sector and provides helpful insights for all public utility sectors and, more generally, for environmental crisis management.

With the increasing global shift toward sustainable development, the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria into corporate strategy has emerged as both a legal requirement and a managerial imperative. This research explores the evolving legal framework governing ESG compliance in India, with a specific focus on corporate environmental responsibility (CER). The study analyzes key regulations such as SEBI’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR), the Companies Act, 2013 (Section 135 – CSR), and relevant environmental statutes like the Environment Protection Act, 1986. The paper critically examines how Indian corporations are responding to mandatory ESG disclosures, the effectiveness of environmental audits, and the role of board-level oversight in ensuring compliance. Using a mixed-methods approach—comprising case studies of listed Indian firms, semi-structured interviews with compliance officers, and legal document analysis—the research highlights systemic gaps in enforcement, greenwashing concerns, and the operational challenges faced by management in aligning with environmental law mandates. The study concludes with a policy roadmap for improving legal accountability mechanisms and proposes a model ESG governance structure for corporations operating in environmentally sensitive sectors.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) presents a fundamental paradox for institutional theory: protocols designed to eliminate traditional intermediaries must increasingly adopt institutionalized practices to gain the legitimacy required for mainstream adoption. Drawing on Suchman's (1995) legitimacy typology, DiMaggio and Powell's (1983) institutional isomorphism framework, and Khanna and Palepu's (2010) institutional voids theory, this conceptual paper develops a multi-level framework—the Legitimacy Paradox Framework (LPF)—to explain how DeFi protocols navigate the tension between decentralized identity and institutional conformity. We advance nine research propositions organized across three theoretical dimensions: (1) the paradoxical relationship between decentralization ideology and legitimacy acquisition; (2) the isomorphic pressures—coercive, mimetic, and normative—driving convergence with traditional finance; and (3) the institutional void-filling mechanisms that DeFi creates and simultaneously struggles to legitimate. The paper introduces the concept of legitimacy bricolage—the creative recombination of institutional and technological legitimacy elements—as a resolution pathway. With DeFi's total value locked surpassing $160 billion and institutional adoption accelerating, this framework provides a timely theoretical lens for understanding how nascent financial ecosystems construct legitimacy while preserving their foundational identity. Implications for organizational theory, financial regulation, and DeFi practitioners are discussed.

The present paper examines the application of institutional theory (hereafter IT) mechanisms (isomorphism and legitimacy) in Shariah governance (henceforth SG) practices and in operations, as it best illuminates the operational guidelines and procedures for the Islamic banks to attain legitimacy. More specifically, the study aims to empirically explore the SG of Islamic banks in Bangladesh from the viewpoint of IT mechanisms. The study applied a qualitative case study method and a semi-structured face-to-face (individual) interview with various stakeholders connected with Bangladesh's Islamic banks and SG practices. The study finds that Islamic banks face pressure from the administration, regulators, and government in performing their activities and functions. More importantly, most Islamic banks replicate one leading Islamic bank, which indicates the presence of mimetic or cultural-cognitive isomorphism. Conversely, normative pressure covers the existing practicing environment, people's social awareness, knowledge, willingness, and accountability of the Board of Directors (BOD) towards the people concerning Shariah compliance with policymaking. Moreover, socio-political norms, regulations, and corruption influenced policymaking, preparation of SG guidelines, and their implementation. The study significantly contributed to national regulatory bodies by exploring the presence of significant pressures on diverse stakeholders. The study has several policy contributions for the Islamic banks and the Central Bank of Bangladesh. Notably, the study will help global regulatory bodies and policymakers minimize multifaceted pressures, improve SG practices, and enhance the quality of Shariah compliance.

Purpose This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations. Findings The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings. Originality/value The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

ABSTRACT This article explores the influence of institutional landscapes on vocational education and training (VET) organisations, leveraging the insights provided by neo-institutional theory on the relationships between internal and external sources for legitimacy and adaptation. The article explains key theoretical concepts from neo-institutional theory such as institutional myths, isomorphism, decoupling, agency, and the definitions of rational and irrational actors, demonstrating their relevance and applicability in contemporary VET research. The author argues that neo-institutional theory offers a framework to investigate the organisational and institutional dynamics shaping VET and opens for analysis, moving beyond current assumptions of formal structure and rationality. By showcasing diverse studies employing neo-institutional concepts, the article highlights the theory’s utility at the individual, organisational, and policy levels. The discussion underscores the importance of grounding VET research in theoretical exploration rather than normative or prescriptive definitions of an ideal state, encouraging a nuanced understanding of VET organisations’ interactions with their environments. The framework supports researchers in extending their analytical scope beyond immediate institutional contexts.

This study examines the implementation of internal control systems (ICS) in public schools across the City Schools Division of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, to understand the structural and institutional factors that perpetuate an accountability gap between urban core and peripheral schools. Drawing on mixed-methods data from 90 education stakeholders, that includes school administrators, teachers, and non-teaching staff, this research applies institutional theory to analyze how equity, professional training, and organizational legitimacy shape the effectiveness of ICS in an urban educational context. Findings reveal a dual accountability system: schools in the East District, benefiting from proximity to supervision, digital infrastructure, and leadership continuity, exhibit normative isomorphism, where ICS is internalized as a shared cultural practice. In contrast, schools in districts (West II, South, North II) operate under coercive isomorphism, with ICS implemented reactively and inconsistently, often only in anticipation of audits. A critical driver of this divide is unequal access to training and onboarding, which systematically excludes new staff, teachers, and non-administrative personnel from meaningful participation in accountability processes. The study demonstrates that ICS functions not merely as a technical compliance mechanism, but as a symbolic institution of legitimacy, one that reinforces existing power hierarchies when access is unequal, but can foster shared ownership when democratized. The research concludes that closing the accountability gap requires more than policy alignment; it demands equity-centered reforms in training, role clarity, digital access, and community engagement. Policy recommendations include the establishment of mobile ICS training caravans, standardized onboarding for all school staff, city-wide digital dashboards, and formalized university-school partnerships. The paper calls for a shift from ritualistic compliance to institutionalized integrity in urban school governance, that is, a transformation where accountability is not imposed, but collectively owned.

Institutional theory has generated considerable insight into fundamental issues within sport. This study seeks to advance Washington and Patterson’s review by providing an empirical review of institutional theory in sport. We follow Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review protocol to identify 188 sport-related institutional studies between 1979 and 2019. Our review provides evidence regarding the state of institutional scholarship within sport via an analysis of authorship, year, journal, methodology, method, study population, and use of institutional constructs (legitimacy, isomorphism, change, logics, fields, and work). Rather than a hostile takeover or a joint venture proposed in Washington and Patterson’s review, the relationship between fields is more aptly described as a diffusion of ideas. By developing an empirical review of institutional studies in sport, we hope to expedite the diffusion of ideas between the two fields and work toward realizing the collective benefits any future joint venture may bring.

Institutional change is being called for to renew higher music education (HME). But what institutional pressures, specifically, are driving these calls, and how are HME organisations responding to pressures to change? By turning to institutional theory, we lean on the concept of institutional isomorphism to shed light on how HME organisations may be navigating pressures to appear legitimate in the field to secure organisational survival. Drawing from a comparative case study of two HME organisations from Norway and the Netherlands, in which strategic plans and interview transcripts with students and professors have been analysed, we discuss how change processes are intertwined with an organisational quest for legitimacy. The findings suggest that there are overarching pressures to change in the field of HME and that variables in the institutional environment indicate how processes of change may unfold. Finally, implications of this unveiled landscape are discussed.

South African universities share strikingly convergent patterns of institutional dysfunction: governance failures, financial mismanagement, leadership volatility, and the decoupling of policy aspiration from organisational practice. This is prevalent across institutions with profoundly different historical formations, resource endowments, and geographic locations. This article proposes that such convergence is neither coincidental nor solely explicable by apartheid-era inheritance or individual leadership failure. Drawing on DiMaggio and Powell's neo-institutional theory of isomorphism, the article argues that coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphic processes structurally produce and reproduce the conditions for dysfunction, by compelling universities to adopt similar forms and institutional structures in pursuit of legitimacy, rather than pedagogic performance. Having established this analytical foundation, the article then extends the theoretical argument by examining how artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to intensify, accelerate, and technically embed each of the three isomorphic mechanisms, while simultaneously obscuring them within algorithmic infrastructure that is largely invisible to institutional actors. The analysis builds on the concept of the "algorithmic iron cage" to describe the condition in which isomorphic logics cease to be merely social pressures and become technical constraints inscribed into the systems universities use to manage admissions, assessment, research metrics, and academic integrity. In the South African context, AI-driven isomorphism carries a further dimension: the mimetic adoption of AI models and frameworks built on Global North data reproduces colonial epistemic hierarchies in technical form, constituting what the article terms "colonial isomorphism 2.0." The analysis concludes by arguing that genuinely counter-isomorphic AI deployment, rather than the legitimacy-driven adoption of AI-as-spectacle, is among the most urgent challenges facing South African higher education policy and institutional leadership

This study examines the institutional responses of tourism higher education institutions (THEIs) in Indonesia to the evolving tourism industry ecosystem during the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Grounded in institutional theory, this study critiques the assumption of isomorphism, which states that external pressures yield uniform responses. Employing a qualitative, multi-case study design, data were gathered through in-depth interviews, institutional documents, and educational policies from three THEIs. The analysis utilized the framework of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures, alongside the interaction between regulative and professional logic. The findings reveal that although THEIs encounter relatively uniform regulative pressures, particularly through the Independent Learning–Independent Campus (MBKM) policy, institutional responses range from symbolic compliance to substantive adaptation to regulative pressures. The predominance of regulative logic fosters a tendency toward administrative legitimacy, while professional logic derived from the industry remains fragmented and not yet strongly institutionalized. The cross-case analysis identifies three institutional adaptation profiles that underscore the role of internal capacity and adaptive leadership in mediating institutional pressure. This study contributes to the advancement of institutional theory by illustrating that institutional pressures in developing countries operate asymmetrically, reinforcing existing practices and decoupling them in higher education.

This article develops a situated conceptual model that reinterprets institutional isomorphism in municipal digital transformation. It addresses the limitations of classical institutional theory by emphasizing interpretive agency, institutional multiplicity and legitimacy construction within structurally constrained local governance settings. Building on institutional logics theory, this study conceptualizes municipalities as embedded in pluralistic fields shaped by bureaucratic, democratic, market and digital logics. It integrates prior research on municipal digital transformation and institutional isomorphism with insights from institutional work and sensemaking to construct a situated model of isomorphic response. The model identifies three mechanisms – symbolic mandates, legitimacy signaling and localized normative referencing – through which municipalities interpret and navigate coercive, mimetic and normative pressures. These mechanism reveal digital transformation as a performative and context-dependent process, explaining variation in organizational change trajectories. As a conceptual article, empirical validation remains for future research through comparative and longitudinal studies. Municipal leaders can apply the model to design reflexive transformation strategies aligned with local logic constellations. Understanding legitimacy construction fosters inclusive, participatory and context-sensitive public innovation. The article reconceptualizes isomorphism as an interpretive and logic-mediated phenomenon, advancing institutional and change theory by highlighting symbolic and discursive dimensions of public sector transformation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to apply institutional theory to demonstrate if and how mimetic, coercive and normative pressures shape technology adoption in hotels and lead to institutional isomorphism. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a qualitative approach involving interviews with managers representing 20 different hotels. A theory-driven thematic analysis was carried out with institutional theory concepts serving as guidance. The data analysis involved three phases, namely, pre-analysis, exploration and finalizing of results. Nvivo software was used to assist with the coding. Findings The results show signs of isomorphism on a large scale across several items related to technology adoption practices and uses of technological tools. For instance, hoteliers adopt similar standards, feel the need to mimic competition and all strive to be well-evaluated on sites such as TripAdvisor to achieve legitimacy in the marketplace. In contrast, coercive pressures from trade associations or other governing bodies seem to have little influence on technology adoption decisions. Instead, consumers are seen as powerful agents driving technology adoption in the industry. Regarding normative pressures, certification from third parties is perceived as a more important source of legitimization than recognition from government institutions or trade associations. Originality/value This study contributes to the still limited literature on institutional theory in tourism and provides an alternative perspective to understanding technology adoption from a rational technology acceptance model point-of-view.

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Institutional theory is a prominent perspective in contemporary organizational research. It encompasses a large, diverse body of theoretical and empirical work connected by a common emphasis on cultural understandings and shared expectations. Institutional theory is often used to explain the adoption and spread of formal organizational structures, including written policies, standard practices, and new forms of organization. Tracing its roots to the writings of Max Weber on legitimacy and authority, the perspective originated in the 1950s and 1960s with the work of Talcott Parsons, Philip Selznick, and Alvin Gouldner on organization–environment relations. It subsequently underwent a “cognitive turn” in the 1970s, with an emphasis on taken-for-granted habits and assumptions, and became commonly known as “neo-institutionalism” in organizational studies. Recently, work based on the perspective has shifted from a focus on processes involved in producing isomorphism to a focus on institutional change, exemplified by studies of the emergence of new laws and regulations, products, services, and occupations. The expansion of the theoretical framework has contributed to its long-term vitality, though a number of challenges to its development remain, including resolving inconsistencies in the different models of decision-making and action (homo economicus vs. homo sociologicus) that underpin institutional analysis and improving our understanding of the intersection of socio-cultural forces and entrepreneurial agency.

The objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework, based on the corporate governance theory of institutional isomorphism, to explain key drivers of the varied research governance practices in Victorian hospitals in relation to the newly introduced National Mutual Acceptance (NMA). The paper commences with a brief discussion of the clinical and economic importance of clinical research. This is followed by a conceptualisation of four pillars in research governance. The following step overlays the constructs of institutional isomorphic theory: organisational legitimacy, organisational fields and the mechanisms of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism, on the governance pillars. This conceptual crossover identifies potential areas that, in addition to regulatory obligations, may influence the level of organisational engagement with NMA objectives. In so doing the model provides meaning and significance to different corporate approaches to the governance of clinical research in organisational address of the implications of the National Mutual Acceptance

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This study investigates about the relationship between institutional pressure and environmental management accounting (EMA) adoption level by applying new institutional sociology perspective to assess the pressures for EMA adoption level with reference to 38 listed manufacturing companies in Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) in Sri Lanka, based on convenient sampling method. Data were collected through structured questionnaire distributing via e-mail and postal mail for accountant or financial managers as respondents. Reliability analysis, descriptive analysis and inferential analysis were applied to analyze the data and three hypotheses were tested by multiple regression analysis. Those hypotheses were constructed to reveal about coercive isomorphism, normative pressure and mimetic processes are positively influence for EMA adoption level. The results indicate the influences of education or/and training, and political or/and legitimacy are positively pressure for the adoption of EMA; although, the pressures on standard responses to uncertainty is insignificant for EMA adoption. In addition, Coercive isomorphism; responses to political influence or/ and legitimacy influences play vital role in pressuring on EMA adoption. Further findings supports to the practical implications of Accountant role and political/ legitimacy influences are important in managing environmental issues in an organization. This study has made preliminary understanding for the new institutional sociology perspective concerning the type of pressure that influences and, provides useful contribution to the present knowledge by exploring more explanations for environmental management accounting adoption in an unexplored context in Sri Lanka.

ABSTRACT This study examines the co-evolution of tourism and the administration of Finnish protected areas (PAs), specifically focusing on how administrative legitimacy-seeking influences sustainable tourism governance. Drawing on concepts from new institutional theory, namely isomorphism (organizational convergence), legitimacy-seeking (the pursuit of societal approval), and decoupling (the separation of formal structures from practices), we analyse key policy documents and annual reports from Finnish Parks and Wildlife from 2005 to 2018. The findings of our study reveal a dual shift in PA governance: ‘platformisation,’ where PAs are transformed into state-orchestrated platforms that facilitate the creation of value and legitimacy through the growth of tourism, and ‘corporatization,’ where private sector governance logics are adopted within public administration. These shifts redefine the state's role in commercializing nature, emphasizing economic outputs and regional development mediated by tourism. We observe a decoupling of organizational practices between broader environmental policies and tourism development objectives, driven by the pursuit of legitimacy. Overall, this research contributes to the critical discourse on the evolution of PA governance. It highlights the significance of understanding these institutional constraints in the context of sustainable tourism governance and evaluates the wider environmental policy implications of tourism growth.

Organizations face growing scrutiny over their sustainability claims, making knowledge governance a critical concern in the management of corporate credibility. This study develops an analytics‐driven knowledge management framework designed to detect and mitigate greenwashing by modeling the breakdowns in codification, verification, and dissemination of sustainability‐related information. Drawing on legitimacy theory, signaling theory, and stakeholder theory, the paper conceptualizes greenwashing as a failure in organizational knowledge processes and introduces a Greenwashing Index (GWI) as a quantifiable proxy for credibility erosion. The proposed system integrates advanced digital tools—BERT‐based sentiment classification, relational recurrent extreme learning machines (RRELM), Monte Carlo uncertainty modeling, and network diffusion analytics—to capture how misleading sustainability messages spread and influence stakeholder trust. A process‐oriented approach is used to trace knowledge from acquisition and structuring to its influence on perception and decision‐making. Empirical results from real‐world data demonstrate how predictive and interpretative analytics can improve transparency, enable early risk detection, and guide governance interventions. The study contributes to the field by bridging process‐based knowledge management and digital trust monitoring, offering both a conceptual model and a practical decision‐support system. Implications for sustainable knowledge governance and process improvement are outlined for managerial practice and organizational design.

This study examines whether sustainability disclosure functions as an effective governance mechanism or instead serves as a symbolic tool that facilitates managerial opportunism in emerging market environments. Drawing on agency and legitimacy theories, it investigates the relationship between greenwashing, defined as the misalignment between sustainability disclosure and actual environmental performance, and earnings management. The study uses panel data from non-financial firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange over the 2020–2024 period, following the implementation of mandatory sustainability reporting requirements. Panel regression models with industry and year fixed effects are employed to control for sectoral and temporal heterogeneity. The findings show that firms with higher levels of greenwashing are more likely to engage in both accrual-based and real earnings management, indicating that symbolic sustainability disclosure is associated with weaker financial reporting quality. Additional dynamic analyses and robustness tests, including lagged specifications and COVID-19-related analyses, confirm the consistency of the results. The evidence suggests that, in weak institutional environments, mandatory sustainability disclosure may function more as a legitimacy tool than as an effective monitoring mechanism. By distinguishing between substantive environmental performance and symbolic disclosure practices, this study raises concerns about the credibility and governance value of sustainability reporting in emerging economies.

Growing sustainability expectations have increased concern about greenwashing, yet comparatively little attention has gone to how the mismatch between green supply chain management (GSCM) practice and sustainability communication itself generates that risk. Working from signalling theory and legitimacy theory, this study builds a discrepancy-based framework explaining how misalignment between operational performance and marketing claims shapes greenwashing risk. A comparative case study of H&M and Patagonia examines how different levels of alignment affect claim credibility and stakeholder trust. The findings show that wider discrepancies raise the likelihood of greenwashing accusations, while transparency and independent verification strengthen credibility and trust. The study identifies the supply chain–channel interface as a key source of greenwashing risk and offers a framework for understanding the relationship between discrepancy, greenwashing risk, and stakeholder trust.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of greenwashing research in business and management, focusing on its conceptual and theoretical foundations. Through a systematic literature review of 97 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus and Web of Science, we use bibliometric analysis to map the evolution of greenwashing studies and network analysis and identify four thematic clusters: (1) symbolic management and CSR communication, (2) environmental regulations and institutional complexity, (3) performance and sustainable practices, and (4) marketing, perception, and trust. Additionally, we perform a full-text analysis to map the theoretical frameworks employed across these clusters, revealing the dominance of macro-level theories (e.g., legitimacy, institutional, and stakeholder theories) and their cross-level interactions with meso- and micro-level approaches. By developing a multi-level theoretical framework, we provide a structured approach to understanding greenwashing across different analytical layers. Then, focusing on the theories used to investigate greenwashing, we identify some avenues for future research. This study has practical implications for understanding how greenwashing affects corporate governance, financial performance, and stakeholder trust, providing insights for enhancing transparency and accountability in sustainable business practices.

This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on strategic positioning of companies and the measurement of greenwashing in sustainability reporting. Its main aim is to synthesize and organize the existing literature, identify key research gaps, and outline directions for future studies. Drawing on a rigorous content analysis of 88 studies, we delineate strategic typologies of greenwashing in sustainability reporting and examine content-analysis-based measurement approaches used to detect it. Our SLR shows that most strategic typologies draw on theories such as legitimacy theory, impression management theory, signaling theory, and stakeholder theory. Several studies adopt a four-quadrant matrix with varying conceptual dimensions, while others classify strategic responses to institutional pressures along a passive–active continuum. However, the evidence suggests that to assume that companies uniformly pursue sustainability reporting strategies is a major oversimplification. The findings also indicate that the literature proposes a variety of innovative, content-analysis-based approaches aimed at capturing divergences between communicative claims and organizational realities—most notably, discrepancies between disclosure and measurable performance, and between symbolic and substantive sustainability actions, as well as the identification of selective or manipulative communication practices that may signal greenwashing. Analytical techniques commonly focus on linguistic and visual cues in sustainability reports, including tone (sentiment and narrative framing), readability (both traditional readability indices and machine learning–based textual complexity measures), and visual content (selective emphasis, imagery framing, and graphic distortions). We also synthesize studies that document empirically verified instances of greenwashing and contrast them with research that, in our view, relies on overly simplified or untested assumptions. Based on this SLR, we identify central theoretical and methodological priorities for advancing the study of greenwashing in sustainability reporting and propose a research agenda to guide future research.

Abstract As customers' green awareness improves, a growing number of Chinese companies are seeking to implement green management. However, in the implementation process, many green brands have engaged in greenwashing. After greenwashing, brand trust between green brands and their stakeholders can suffer a great deal of damage. A valid brand strategy and underlying mechanism should be identified to repair green brand trust after greenwashing. This study focuses on brand strategies and their underlying mechanisms adopted from institutional theory for green brand trust repair after greenwashing. Based on an organizational-level trust repair model, this study finds that companies should adopt a “timely-considered-timely” or “timely-considered-considered” brand strategy with three separate stages of brand trust repair, as opposed to other timely or considered brand strategy combinations, in order to achieve an optimal green brand trust repair effect. Moreover, this study also shows that the “considered-timely-timely” brand strategy achieves the worst green brand trust repair effect and that green brand legitimacy plays a significant mediating role in the brand trust repair process. These findings enrich the theories of brand management, green marketing, and trust repair and offer important managerial implications to help enterprises repair damaged trust.

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Research Summary: Given the growing legitimacy of corporate social responsibility (CSR), many firms engage in symbolic communication to showcase CSR without undertaking commensurate substantive actions. This “ CSR decoupling ” can create a risk of perceived greenwashing, which, in turn, may negatively affect a firm's performance. In this study, we explore an unexamined antecedent of decoupling: interfirm affiliation. Specifically, we use the structure of Business Groups (BGs) to investigate CSR decoupling across rather than within firms. We find that apex firms within a group are more likely to engage in CSR decoupling compared with non-apex firms and, importantly, are partially shielded from greenwashing perceptions by the market. Our research contributes to the literatures on decoupling, perceived greenwashing, and the role of BGs and their CSR practices. Managerial Summary: Companies that engage in symbolic communication about corporate social responsibility (CSR) without substantive actions risk being perceived as “ greenwashers, ” a perception that harms firm performance. Our study demonstrates how, in certain contexts where firms are affiliated with others, this may not occur. For instance, apex firms

The study aims to explore the greenwashing phenomenon in the context of FinTech and sustainable development and analyze the conceptual frameworks and theoretical perspectives that connect greenwashing, FinTech, and sustainable development. A qualitative approach was employed in this research, which was primarily based on secondary data. The findings show that FinTech significantly contributes to sustainability by promoting environmental conservation, economic growth, and financial inclusion across various SDG domains. Additionally, the theoretical perspectives examine key theories (stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, signaling theory, and institutional theory) and highlight how greenwashing practices might influence the FinTech sector. Furthermore, this study draws attention to the potential economic, social, and environmental impact of greenwashing on FinTech. Finally, the study offers valuable insights for strategy formulation to prevent companies from making misleading environmental claims. Above all, the present study makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate regarding the links between greenwashing, FinTech, and sustainable development.

This study aims to review the literature on the intersection of greenwashing and corporate governance, with a specific focus on environmental, social, governance (ESG) practices. The study undertakes an extensive systematic literature review (SLR) of 97 articles retrieved from the Scopus database. It applies the TCCM (theory, context, characteristics and methodology) framework to present its findings. The research indicates an increasing trend in publications on this topic, particularly after 2020, with contributions across 50+ journals and a broad geographic spread. The dominant theories used in the studies include stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and greenwashing theory. The context of greenwashing behaviors differs significantly across industries and regions, emphasizing the need for tailored governance solutions. Key themes include organizational setting, greenwashing activities, ESG performance, financial impact, investor analysis and corporate governance. The research base is primarily dominated by empirical studies relying on secondary data from reputed sources. The study’s findings hold value for both academicians and practitioners by providing insights into greenwashing behaviors and their governance implications. They highlight the importance of customized governance strategies across industries and regions, fostering better ESG performance and stakeholder trust. The study highlights significant social implications by addressing the adverse effects of greenwashing on public trust, ethical business practices and stakeholder confidence. By promoting transparency and authentic ESG practices, it fosters greater accountability among corporations, empowering consumers and investors to make informed decisions. This, in turn, supports equitable access to sustainable development benefits, encourages ethical corporate behavior and strengthens community trust in sustainability initiatives, ultimately contributing to a fairer, more socially responsible economic and environmental system. This study provides a comprehensive review of greenwashing and governance practices, offering a structured analysis through the TCCM framework and revealing critical gaps as well as future research directions in this domain. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explicitly links corporate governance and greenwashing using the TCCM framework.

This article examines the practice of greenwashing in the sustainability reports of three major palm oil companies in Southeast Asia: PT A, PT B, and PT C. Employing the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach developed by Fairclough, this study analyzes the 2024 sustainability reports of these companies to identify the diction, discursive structures, and ideologies reproduced through corporate narratives. The findings reveal notable similarities in the use of symbolic language such as “zero deforestation,” “100% traceability,” and “net zero emission”, which are presented without methodological transparency or the inclusion of counter-narratives from civil society. Each of these companies constructs sustainability discourse as a tool for reputation and legitimacy rather than as a genuine instrument for ecological and social transformation. This article recommends a reformulation of sustainability reporting to be more reflective and accountable, incorporating risk disclosure, third-party audits, and the voices of affected communities.

This study explores the potential for greenwashing in the sustainability reports of cement companies in Indonesia through a multiple case study approach involving PT Semen A, PT Semen B, PT Semen C, and PT Semen D. Grounded in legitimacy theory, it examines how companies construct sustainability narratives and deploy strategic disclosure practices to maintain social legitimacy despite media scrutiny of their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts. Five analytical indicators—selective disclosure, decoupling, attention deflection, claim greenwashing, and firm-level greenwashing—are employed to identify discrepancies between corporate narratives and operational realities. Data analysis is conducted through qualitative content analysis, which systematically cross-checks sustainability reports against media coverage from the same reporting year to reveal inconsistencies and omissions. The findings reveal that all four companies demonstrate varying intensities of greenwashing practices: PT Semen A and PT Semen B exhibit significant material issue omissions, particularly regarding environmental damage and worker safety incidents; PT Semen C displays the highest intensity of greenwashing, characterized by internal data inconsistencies and systematic exclusion of social and environmental conflicts; and PT Semen D, while demonstrating lower overall greenwashing levels, notably omits governance-related corruption issues. The study underscores the critical need for enhanced regulatory frameworks, substantive external assurance mechanisms, and greater accountability in sustainability reporting within Indonesia's cement sector to ensure genuine transparency and effective stakeholder engagement.

This study aims to analyze Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) communication in building stakeholder trust in public banking companies in Indonesia amid the increasing issue of greenwashing. The research uses a qualitative approach with a descriptive design of a case study. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with management, questionnaires to licensed employees, as well as observations of sustainability reports, annual reports, official company websites, press releases, and corporate social media. The results show that ESG communication has an important role in shaping stakeholder trust, especially when messages are conveyed in a transparent, consistent, accountable, and supported by tangible evidence of implementation. The interview's findings show that management views ESG communication as a strategic part of a company's reputation and legitimacy, but still faces challenges in maintaining a fit between sustainability narratives and business practices. The results of the questionnaire showed that transparency and accountability received high ratings, while the evidence aspect of the program was still relatively low. The results of the observation also confirm that the intensity of ESG communication has not always been followed by adequate depth of information. This study concludes that credible, data-driven, and integrated ESG communication is an important factor in strengthening stakeholder trust and minimizing the risk of perceived greenwashing in public banking companies in Indonesia.

PurposeThis study aims to elucidate the causal relationship between corporate greenwashing and celebrity leaders.Design/methodology/approachThis study considers winning the National Model Worker Award as an external shock for producing celebrity leaders and conducts a difference-in-difference (DID) estimation with listed companies from 2009 to 2022 in the Chinese context.FindingsThe findings indicate an increase in greenwashing of companies with celebrity leaders in the post-award period. Stakeholder pressure can moderate the effect of celebrity leaders on corporate greenwashing.Originality/valueThis study enriches the research on the antecedents of greenwashing and the impacts of celebrity leaders. The findings advance the understanding of the real effect of celebrity leaders on environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and provide new insights into how celebrities respond to legitimacy pressures.

This article examines how the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) uses media communication to construct legitimacy in shifting conflict contexts. Focusing on official statements, news reports, and commentaries produced during a large-scale armed campaign and the subsequent ceasefire, it analyzes how discursive legitimation strategies are reconfigured across conflict phases. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and Van Leeuwen’s (2005) framework, the study traces how the MNDAA deploys strategies of authorization, moralization, and rationalization in context-sensitive ways. The findings show that, while the main categories of discursive legitimation remained consistent in the MNDAA’s communication, their form and emphasis shifted between wartime mobilization and governance under ceasefire. By foregrounding discourse rather than material service provision, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of rebel legitimacy as a communicative process, highlighting the importance of media strategies in sustaining authority within civil wars.

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This article analyzes discursive legitimation strategies in the public diplomacy of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the course of three wars between Israel and Hamas by combining critical discourse analysis (CDA) with a quantitative analysis of legitimation strategies. CDA fulfills a critical role in scrutinizing the power that a foreign ministry may have by influencing the attitudes of foreign governments, populations and media outlets. This power is theoretically assessed by tracking legitimation strategies and lexical choices (e.g. war on terror, human shields) diachronically and discussing legitimation strategies in light of their ability to yield resonance. The study’s empirical contribution is an analysis of how legitimation strategies develop in order to reinforce and obtain resonance with a target audience. It contributes theoretically by arguing that construing a local, particular war as global and universal enables the legitimation strategies of political leaders to obtain resonance with audiences.

ABSTRACT In this work, we investigate the way in which the two latest Presidents of the Commission have tackled the question of the legitimacy of the EU in the delivery of the State of the Union Addresses (SOTEU). Our analysis, based on a qualitative content analysis of the SOTEU speeches, identifies a marked difference in the discursive legitimation strategies employed by the two Presidents and in the conception of the legitimacy of the EU that they promote. In Barroso’s speeches, the legitimazing principle recalls the classical functionalist interpretation of the ‘rationality’ of the EU decisions mainly in terms of economic outputs, whilst the underlying conception of legitimacy that shapes Juncker’s speeches recalls an input-based understanding of legitimacy as democracy and popular sovereignty. By way of conclusion, we argue that the introduction of the Spitzencandidaten system has been instrumental in providing the two Presidents with a different discursive opportunity structure.

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This article looks at how charity organizations running private residential child care institutions on the Kenyan coast make use of the personal data of children in their care, as a means of securing and maintaining the support of donors from the global North. The strategy involves the online showcasing of children’s profiles—individual children’s photos, accompanied by their names, birth dates, annual development, and their emotion-inducing personal and/or family histories are posted on the respective organizations’ websites, making them accessible to the global public. I analyze and problematize this practice, positing that while it explicitly serves fund-raising purposes and is motivated by the search for cost-effective fund-raising-oriented communication, at a more implicit level, it is equally a strategy used to discursively legitimize the organizations and their child ‘rescue’ activities, within the contemporary climate of deinstitutionalization. This strategy results in a violation of children’s rights; has ethical implications; and is not without consequences for the concerned children’s well-being.

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This study applies T. van Leeuwen’s theoretical framework of discursive legitimation to analyze strategies employed by American media in covering China’s demographic issues from 2021 to 2024. Through critical discourse analysis of content from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, the research examines how strategies of authority, moral evaluation, rationalization, normalization, and narrativization are utilized in constructing China’s image. Findings reveal that American media predominantly delegitimize China’s demographic issues while legitimizing Western perspectives, applying double standards when evaluating similar actions by the US and China. The study demonstrates that demographic media discourse functions not merely as an information tool but as a powerful mechanism for shaping a nation’s international image through legitimizing the “self” and delegitimizing the “other.”

The present study explores the discursive (de)legitimation strategies enacted by three Spanish politicians, viz., Pablo Iglesias, Pedro Sánchez, and Santiago Abascal, within the context of a no-confidence motion speech against the governing parties in the Spanish Congress in 2017 (Popular Party), 2018 (Popular Party), and 2020 (Partido Socialista Obrero Español). Using the output of a keyword search, a qualitative analysis of the concordances where these words are used is conducted to unveil the appeals most frequently employed to justify the need to file the motion and provide reasons to evict the incumbent party. Findings point to interindividual differences regarding the appeals used. Iglesias heavily relies on altruism to present his group’s project as an alternative and on implicit authorization via referencing sources that support his claims to gain the audience’s credibility. Sánchez legitimizes his actions by rationalizing his reasons for filing the motion and conveying – via implicit authorization – that the motion is triggered by the need to uphold constitutional principles. Abascal, on his part, relies on the negative association of the out-group with lexis of a moralizing nature that challenges their credibility and reputation via direct appeals to Sánchez and Iglesias while appealing to emotions and the rationalization of the motion in terms of freedom.

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In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of research on discursive legitimation, which has shed light on how legitimacy is established through communication. However, this body of work remains fragmented, and there is a need to synthesize and develop a more comprehensive and in-depth theoretical understanding of this vibrant area of research. This article aims to address this need by providing an integrative theoretical framework and outlining an agenda for future research. The framework encompasses five key elements of discursive legitimation: strategies, positions, foundations, temporality, and arenas. Drawing on this framework, we present a research agenda that highlights key topics related to these elements along with theoretical and methodological considerations cutting across them. Our contribution lies in conceptualizing discursive legitimation as a multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon, offering a complementary framework to existing models and paving the way for future studies, and placing discursive strategies—which have been the focus of prior research—in context by highlighting the critical role of key discursive elements in enabling or constraining legitimation processes.

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The goal of this paper is to discuss discursive legitimation strategies in the arena of global epidemiological surveillance. Literature on global health policies has addressed the increased relevance of epidemic surveillance. However it remains to be discussed in depth which discursive strategies are employed in order to legitimate epidemiological surveillance and intelligence. Departing from Leeuwen’s work (2008) concerning discursive legitimation strategies this paper intends to debate how health authorities, namely the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, use narrative legitimation tools in order to validate its policy options. The legitimation discursive strategies of authorization and rationalization (Leeuwen, 2008) are addressed in order to understand how political narratives increasingly frame global health issues employing normative representations. The global health discourses developed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control are discussed from the perspective of the legitimation discursive strategies mentioned above.

Major digital platforms have long resisted fact-checking their users, even as public concern about misinformation has grown. We explore how they legitimated a change in this policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using blog posts by Meta, YouTube and Twitter, the study contributes to the body of research on content moderation by US-based platforms as they expand their policies into contested areas. Based on the theories of discursive legitimation, we examine the strategies platforms employ when presenting their actions in countering false and misleading health information. We show that the pandemic emerges as an important opportunity for platforms to narrate their legitimacy in society. Yet, the newly adopted responsibility to curb health misinformation does not signal a reform towards more truthful platforms, but temporary exceptions whose future is left open. These findings foreshadow the reversals of misinformation policies in recent years and highlight the continued importance of external regulation.

Abstract Using sample firms from eight energy-intensive industries included in the State Council of China’s Notice on the Pilot Work of Carbon Emission Trading from 2015 to 2019, this study examines the relationship between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure, and explores the moderating effect of political connection on this relationship. The baseline results show that environmental legitimacy pressure is positively associated with impression management of carbon information disclosure, and political connection moderates this relationship, that is, the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in politically-connected firms is stronger than that in non-politically-connected firms. The results are robust to various sensitivity tests. Further analyses show that (i) the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in non-state owned enterprises (non-SOEs) is stronger than that in SOEs, (ii) firms facing higher negative environmental legitimacy pressure have stronger motivation to conduct impression management of carbon information disclosure, (iii) firms facing environmental legitimacy pressure conduct both selective disclosure and expressive manipulation but they have stronger motivation to conduct expressive manipulation. This study extends the literature on impression management of carbon information disclosure. The findings in this study provide policy implications not only for China but also for countries with large carbon emission.

Institutional environment demands from organizations to be accountable for their social and environmental actions and to provide information allowing the assessment of their long-term prospects for profitability may lead organizations to adopt Impression Management (IM) tactics to manage perceptions. Consequently, organizations may provide accounts demonstrating that they are good corporate citizens and possess the intangible assets required for future good financial performance. Although organizations have increased their corporate social reporting, the quality and reliability of those reports have been questioned. The literature suggests that these disclosures tend to be selective and biased, and do not enhance corporate accountability. This study proposes a formal conceptual framework linking IM, social and environmental accountability, financial performance, and organizational legitimacy. The arguments in this study are of economic, societal, and ethical concern, as IM behaviors may undermine the transparency of social and environmental reporting, and the decoupling between the economic and social image offered by companies through reporting and the reality. These insights also point at the complexities for organizations in dealing with accountability to all stakeholders. The conceptual framework proposed is useful for future studies aiming at understanding how organizations use IM in their corporate social reporting in the accountability process.

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This paper examines how organisations employ impression management tactics in extra‐financial reporting, particularly in the context of environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. As stakeholder scrutiny and regulatory expectations intensify, organisations increasingly shape non‐financial disclosures to influence perceptions of legitimacy, transparency and ethical conduct. Despite the growing volume of research on impression management, greenwashing and narrative disclosure, the literature remains fragmented across disciplinary silos. This study addresses the lack of a consolidated impression management framework by way of a two‐stage analytical approach. First, a systematic review of 806 academic sources using bibliometric mapping is performed revealing five thematic clusters that delineate the intellectual structure of the field. Second, a thematic coding process is conducted to derive a taxonomy of 17 impression management tactics, organised into five functional groupings: (i) narrative strategies (perception management, self‐promotion, reputation enhancement, building stakeholder rapport, deflecting criticism), (ii) distortive disclosure practices (exaggerating qualitative disclosures, selective disclosures, obfuscation techniques, re‐using information, temporal framing of disclosures), (iii) visual and digital tactics (distorting graphical disclosures, social media strategies), (iv) symbolic compliance and governance signals (tick‐box compliance, superficial board compositions, assurance signalling) and (v) symbolic legitimacy actions (intimidation and image‐driven philanthropy). The current study consolidates the fragmented literature into a unified framework, provides a theoretically grounded taxonomy that offers distinct and multi‐disciplinary areas for future research and offers practical guidance for assurance providers and regulators wanting to detect and evaluate impression management in an era of growing voluntary and mandatory sustainability reporting and assurance.

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Abstract Demand for chocolate is at an all-time high. However, producing chocolate comes with some sticky social, environmental and economic problems. This paper focuses on the issues of child labour, forced child labour and unsustainable farming practice within the chocolate industry, and specifically on the discourse about Nestle’s Ivory Coast cocoa supply chain. We analyse corporate disclosures, related counter accounts and subsequent responses in new and old media as a dynamic communication process. A mobilising of Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical metaphor of impression management contextualises each communication as a performance towards an audience. Behind the communications is Nestle’s need to repair its legitimacy – because child labour and unsustainable farming exist in its cocoa supply chain – and the audience’s vested interests in their counter-performances. The Nestle case offers substantive and nuanced insights into corporate disclosure and communication practices, how the Internet is changing the more unidirectional performances of the past, and how appreciation of counter accounts and subsequent responses to counter accounts contributes to theoretical understanding as well as provides insights into the plight of cocoa’s child labourers.

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ABSTRACT Although an increasing number of companies have publicly declared environmental targets (ETs), scant research has been conducted in this area. This study, therefore, investigates the extent of corporate environmental targets disclosure (ETD) and empirically examines whether environmental governance and performance influence the ETD of companies in the U.K. during the 2005–2013 period. We find that firms show a large degree of variability and inconsistency in their reporting of ETs. The results indicate that U.K. firms, particularly those with high environmental sensitivity, tend to disclose symbolic soft or semi-hard ETs to manage stakeholder perceptions and legitimize their existence. Moreover, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines, sustainability committees, and sustainability assurance show positive relationships with ETD. We also find that U.K. firms that perform well environmentally are likely to set and disclose hard ETs. These results support stakeholder, legitimacy, and impression management theories. We suggest that there is a need for regulations that will not only enhance the usefulness of ETD but also encourage companies to take serious proactive action to reduce negative environmental impacts, possibly creating ‘win-win’ solutions. Our findings have important implications for policy-makers and various stakeholder groups.

Synopsis The research problem We examined the graphical presentation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures after the passage of the European Union ESG reporting mandate (“EU Directive”). We also investigated the market consequences of the change in the quality of the graphical presentations of ESG disclosure. Motivation or theoretical reasoning ESG graphs assist firms’ legitimation strategies, and disclosure intentions influence their use. Some firms choose to make rhetorical visual disclosures for pragmatic legitimacy without substantive actions (i.e., green impression management), while others pursue moral legitimacy with genuine sustainability actions and disclosures that align with societal expectations. Examining how firms adjust the quality of their visual communication strategies offers insights into management’s ESG disclosure intentions and incentives in response to a mandatory ESG reporting regulation. The test hypotheses EU firms could comply with the EU Directive to improve all aspects of their ESG disclosures, including graphical disclosures presenting comprehensive details about their policies, risks, and performance concerning environmental concerns, social and employee factors, human rights, anticorruption measures, and board director diversity. Thus, we studied whether the EU reporting directive can improve the quality of ESG graph disclosures. Target population This study addresses the current initiatives taken by policymakers, regulators, standard setters, investors, and businesses to improve the quality of sustainability disclosures worldwide. Our study offers valuable evidence supporting the notion that mandatory ESG disclosure regulation positively influences the quality of ESG graphs, thereby better-equipping stakeholders with relevant information for their pricing decisions. Adopted methodology Our analysis began with manually collecting graph information from the top 100 EU and U.S. firms’ ESG reports spanning from 2016 to 2020, resulting in a dataset of 5593 graphs. We utilized the difference-in-differences (DID) method, using the EU indicator to identify treatment firms and the POST indicator to identify the postadoption period. The interaction term [Formula: see text] estimates the impact of the EU Directive on ESG graph quality for EU firms. Additionally, we created an ESG graph distortion index to quantify graph quality. Analyses We evaluated the reduction in ESG graph distortion among EU firms compared to U.S. firms during the postadoption period of the EU Directive. We also applied the instrumental variable approach to investigate the value relevance of ESG graphical disclosure on financial and market performance. Moreover, we utilized a structural equation model (path analysis) to estimate the indirect effects of ESG performance and ESG disclosure on the relationship between ESG graph distortion and firms’ financial and market performance. Findings We found that EU firms produced better ESG graphs than U.S. firms after the implementation of the EU Directive. We also found that firms producing high-quality ESG graphs are associated with better financial and market performance. This positive relationship is independent of the influence of ESG performance but partially explained by the impact of ESG disclosure. Finally, EU firms that continued to produce low-quality ESG graphs exhibited poorer market and financial performance and increased market illiquidity in the postadoption period.

ABSTRACT: Greenwashing is a thoughtful matter for the reliability of commercial eco-friendly statement. Through a developing number of corporations see-through eco-friendly act to happen interested party prospects, inquiries are being elevated about the detach concerning their green rhetoric and their actual eco-friendly impression. This research imagines greenwashing as a representative revelation plan that contains firms purposefully offering, over-claiming and/or ignoring environmental information to boost their legitimacy lacking taking any actual action to improve the situation. The paper assumes the views of legality and impress management models to discover the disconnects in conservation levels and pointers. The study creates outlines of simplifications of green obligations, careful error of adverse things, and inconsistent focus on slight enterprises over methodical study of company eco-friendly reports and act data made widely obtainable. The outcomes advise that viable reputation distresses and expose excellence difficulties stand-in chances for misleading conservation message. The study provides a distinguished way of recognising and battling greenwashing since it distinguishes representative rhetoric from the assessable conservational results. To conclude, the study highlights the need for better reporting values, verification systems, and answerability structures to improve transparency and build a more reliable corporate environmental reporting. Keywords: Greenwashing; Corporate Environmental Disclosure; Legitimacy Theory; Impression Management; Environmental Reporting; Corporate Accountability.

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Today, companies use various sustainability disclosure strategies to enhance their reputation and legitimacy in the eyes of society. Previous research found that companies with strong environmental performance use impression management tactics and narcissism to mask their poor performance. This study aims to analyze the narratives and visuals of environmental disclosures by companies with strong environmental performance through the lens of narcissism and impression management theories. This study chose a semiotic approach to answer the research questions. The data comprised annual/sustainability reports from 119 companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in 2021, classified as Green PROPER companies across 33 industrial sectors. Data analysis involved two stages: the first was narrative analysis, and the second was visual analysis of images/photos. The results indicate that companies use narcissistic strategies of self-praise, regulatory compliance, and award achievements in their environmental narrative disclosures. The textual narrative of destructive narcissism involves self-praise, while constructive narcissism involves achieving awards and complying with regulations and laws. Meanwhile, in the visualization of environmental disclosures, they use a more selective strategy, choosing many images of people who convey an impression of innocence over others. This strategy is used to enhance the positive image and legitimacy of environmentally friendly companies. The simultaneous use of narcissistic and impression-management strategies in environmental disclosures by PROPER companies is a novel finding of this study. This study provides empirical evidence that companies with good environmental performance use both narrative and visual impression management strategies in their sustainability disclosures. Additionally, this research contributes to enriching psychological and semiotic theories in understanding corporate non-financial information.

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Against the policy backdrop of high-quality development and the “Dual Carbon” goals, corporate environmental responsibility and green governance have emerged as core drivers of corporate value creation and resource allocation in capital markets. However, in practice, corporate environmental disclosure has increasingly degenerated into an impression management tool. Using a sample of China’s A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2024, this paper combines text analysis of annual reports with green patent data to systematically examine the impact of performance feedback on corporate strategic environmental decoupling, drawing upon the behavioral theory of the firm and legitimacy theory. The findings are as follows: First, negative performance feedback significantly increases corporate greenwashing propensity, whereas positive performance feedback significantly strengthens corporate brownwashing behavior. Second, government regulation amplifies the costs of falsifying environmental information, significantly suppressing the positive impact of negative performance feedback on greenwashing, but exacerbating the positive impact of positive performance feedback on brownwashing. Conversely, media attention amplifies the benefits of corporate green performances, significantly strengthening the catalytic effect of negative performance feedback on greenwashing, while effectively suppressing the positive impact of positive performance feedback on brownwashing. Third, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of performance feedback on corporate strategic decoupling in environmental disclosure is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, firms facing high industry competitive pressure, and those in heavily polluting industries. By integrating greenwashing and brownwashing into a unified analytical framework, this study expands the research boundaries of corporate environmental disclosure and strategic behaviors. Furthermore, it deepens the application contexts of the behavioral theory of the firm within non-financial disclosure, deconstructs the myth of homogeneous governance effects under legitimacy pressure, and provides vital implications for investors, policymakers, and fund managers.

This study examines how the Planet and People dimensions are represented in PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk's 2025 Sustainability Report through Roland Barthes's semiotic perspective and explores their implications for green accounting practices. An interpretive qualitative approach was employed using document analysis and multimodal semiotics. The study analysed verbal, visual, and numerical signs within the sustainability report through the levels of denotation, connotation, and myth, supported by legitimacy theory, impression management, and decoupling. The findings indicate that the report constructs the company's environmental and social identity through integrated textual, visual, and numerical representations that reinforce its sustainability commitments and organisational legitimacy. However, the analysis also reveals asymmetries between the prominence of sustainability achievements and the disclosure of reporting limitations, creating a potential risk of semiotic greenwashing through selective representation rather than explicit misinformation. This study contributes to the accounting literature by demonstrating how semiotic analysis extends conventional assessments of sustainability reporting beyond disclosure content to examine how corporate legitimacy is constructed through representational practices. The findings also provide practical insights for improving the transparency, balance, and accountability of sustainability reporting and green accounting practices.  

Adverse environmental events that threaten an organization’s legitimacy require disclosure strategies capable of promoting changes in stakeholders’ perceptions. This study examines impression management in sustainability report narratives in response to adverse environmental events as a strategy to maintain, gain, or enhance legitimacy. Documentary research was conducted on an electric power company that reports adverse environmental events in its sustainability report. Content analysis was applied to the collected data. Evidence of the adoption of legitimacy strategies aimed at shaping stakeholders’ perceptions is observed in sustainability report narratives responding to negative incidents and external pressures, together with substantive accountability actions, board restructuring, and an increase in the amount of voluntary disclosures. These findings provide relevant signals to stakeholders; however, the intentionality of those preparing the sustainability report narratives was not ascertained.