LEGITIMACY, MEASUREMENT AND EXPERIMENTS

by

ALEXANDER C. LEWIS, M.A.

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DISSERTATION
Presented to the Graduate Faculty of
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The University of Texas at San Antonio
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
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for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES

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COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Jonathan Clark, Ph.D., Chair
Michael McDonald, Ph.D.
Arkangel Cordero, Ph.D.
Alexandre Bitektine, Ph.D.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO

College of Business
Department of Management
August 2020
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 DEDICATION

To Yeseul… thank you.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge and thank several individuals. Jonathan, for his support and

faith. Arkangel, for being a colleague. Michael, for allowing me to run before I could walk. Alex,

for taking a chance. Both Poonam and Kai, for always being willing to share a laugh. Mary, for

looking out. Steven, for his camaraderie. And the dozens of others, who in their own small ways,

made my journey here more enjoyable. Thank you.

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August, 2020

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 LEGITIMACY, MEASUREMENT AND EXPERIMENTS

Alexander C. Lewis Ph.D.

The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2020

Supervising Professor: Jonathan Clark, Ph.D.

This dissertation comprises three papers, in addition to introductory and concluding

chapters. The overall purpose of this dissertation is to measure and determine the dimensionality

of individual legitimacy judgments, as well as to indirectly explore the processes of their

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formation and the subsequent action based on that formation. The first paper develops and

validates a scale based off Tost’s (2011) typology of legitimacy judgments: instrumental, moral,
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and relational legitimacy. The dimensionality of the instrument broadly confirms Tost’s model.

The second paper uses an experiment to test antecedents and outcomes of legitimacy judgments,
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finding that different types of rhetoric influence distinct dimensions of legitimacy. It further tests

the effect of evaluator cultural values on this relationship. Emerging from this paper is the
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recognition of a dominant, overall legitimacy factor, reflecting the shared variance of the

individual dimensions, as well as unique, meaningful variance possessed by each individual

dimension. The third paper applies the instrument in order to test the relationship between

business school-related values and the evaluation of social enterprise legitimacy. Results from

this paper are largely mixed, but generally support the structure and validity of the instrument

itself.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii

Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................iv

List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vi

List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii

Chapter One: Introduction to the dissertation ..................................................................................1

Chapter Two: An instrument for measuring legitimacy judgments.................................................7

Chapter Three: Culture and legitimacy judgments, an experiment ...............................................27

Chapter Four: The legitimacy of social enterprises in business schools .......................................53

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Chapter Five: Summary of dissertation .........................................................................................85
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References ......................................................................................................................................98

Vita
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 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Existing measures of legitimacy judgments ..........................................................16

Table 2 Initial set of items...................................................................................................20

Table 3 Geomin rotated factor loadings ..............................................................................22

Table 4 Inter-factor correlations .........................................................................................22

Table 5 Standardized factor loadings ..................................................................................24

Table 6 Inter-factor correlations .........................................................................................25

Table 7 Fit statistics ............................................................................................................45

Table 8 Standardized factor loadings from bifactor model .................................................46

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Table 9 Bifactor SEM results (standardized) ......................................................................47

Table 10
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SEM results (unstandardized) ................................................................................72

Table 11 Bifactor SEM results (unstandardized) ..................................................................77

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Table 12 Results from invariance testing ..............................................................................78

Table 13 Legitimacy judgment instrument ...........................................................................85

Table 14 Summary of findings..............................................................................................86

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Table 15 Inter-factor correlations controlling for general legitimacy factor ........................90

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Interest in legitimacy (2005-2016)...........................................................................8

Figure 2 Hypothesized model...............................................................................................37

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 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE DISSERTATION

In this dissertation, I examine legitimacy judgments—an individual’s judgments of “the

extent to which an entity is appropriate for its social context” (Tost, 2011: 688). This endeavor is

both a part of an increased focus on the microfoundations of institutional theory (Chandler &

Hwang, 2015; Gehman, Lounsbury, & Greenwood, 2016; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Powell &

Rerup, 2017; Suddaby, Bitektine & Haack, 2017) as well as a movement towards institutional

experiments (Deephouse, Bundy, Tost, & Suchman, 2017; Glaser, Fast, Harmon, & Green,

2017). In the first study of this dissertation, I develop a scale based on Tost’s (2011) typology of

legitimacy judgments, in which she argues that legitimacy judgments exist on three dimensions:

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moral, instrumental, and relational. In the second study, I integrate both institutional rhetoric and
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individual values into a model testing, their interaction on legitimacy. In doing this, it

empirically links legitimacy judgments to a key antecedent in its nomological network: rhetoric
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(Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). More importantly, it further explores the microfoundations of

legitimacy judgments, linking them with individual values which then serve as the

microfoundations of regional or national culture. In the third study, I apply instrument to more
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practical ends, understanding the role of business school education in the evaluation of social

enterprise legitimacy and the subsequent ability of social enterprises to attract applicants.

Introduction to legitimacy

Dating to antiquity, the concept of legitimacy is one of the oldest constructs in social

thought (Zelditch, 2001); in the context of organizational studies, interest in legitimacy is largely

born of Max Weber’s Economy and Society via the work of Talcott Parsons. While scholars from

different disciplines have provided a variety of definitions for legitimacy (Johnson, Dowd, &

Ridgeway, 2006), within institutional theory, the most popular definition is from Mark

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Suchman’s 1995 article, “Managing legitimacy: strategic and institutional approaches,” which

has garnered 16,000 citations on Google Scholar as of late spring, 2020. In the article, Suchman

defines legitimacy as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are

desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values,

beliefs, and definitions (1995: 574). More recent work has simplified the definition, suggesting

that an entity is legitimate when judged as “appropriate for their social context” (Suddaby,

Bitektine, & Haack, 2017; Tost, 2011: 688).

A number of institutional theorists have described legitimacy as one of the most

important constructs in institutional theory (Colyvas & Powell, 2006; Deephouse & Suchman,

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2008; Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017). Organizations do not just rely on their environments
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for resources but also for social support (Scott, 2014), and such support is contingent on the

perception of legitimacy (Meyer & Scott, 1983). As a result, legitimacy is featured centrally in
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many of the seminal works of neo-institutional theory (e.g. Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Tolbert &

Zucker, 1983) and is the focus of increased attention as institutional theorists move to examine

its microfoundations (Deephouse et al, 2017; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Suddaby et al., 2017).
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Initially, scholars used the construct of legitimacy to explain the stability of authority and

regimes within organizations (Dornbusch & Scott, 1975; Zelditch & Walker, 1984). Regimes

which were perceived as legitimate would be less likely to be challenged and more likely to be

defended if challenged (Zelditch & Walker, 1984). In other words, legitimacy served as a buffer

against change, a role it continues to play in institutional theory (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005).

Meyer and Rowan (1977) subsequently leveraged the construct to explain how external

institutions influenced the structures and practices of organizations, with organizations lacking

external legitimacy being denied social and economic resources. In this vein, legitimacy is

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necessary for organizational survival (Baum & Oliver, 1991; Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002) and

successful organizational change (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Huy, Corley, & Kraatz, 2014).

Until recently, the treatment of legitimacy by institutional theorists had somewhat

ossified (Deephouse et al., 2017; Suddaby et al., 2017). However, a series of recent conceptual

pieces (Bitektine, 2011; Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Tost, 2011) has prompted scholars to

foreground the nature of legitimacy itself, resulting in new chapters in the Academy of

Management Annals (Suddaby et al., 2017) and The Sage Handbook of Organizational

Institutionalism (Deephouse et al., 2017).

In their review, Suddaby, Bitektine, and Haack (2017) describe three perspectives on

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legitimacy. They name the first perspective legitimacy-as-property, the second legitimacy-as-
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process, and the third, and most recent, legitimacy-as-perception, the perspective within which

legitimacy judgments fall. The first and the oldest perspective, legitimacy-as-property,
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characterizes legitimacy as “a capacity, property or trait that can be possessed or exchanged

between organizations” (458). Within this perspective, scholars are most interested in the entity

achieving legitimacy and the traits resulting in legitimacy. The second perspective, legitimacy-
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as-process, understands legitimacy through a social constructivist lens (Berger & Luckmann,

1966). Here, legitimacy is a “structured set or sets of formal or emergent activities that describe

how an actor acquires affiliation with an existing social order or category” (Suddaby et al., 2017:

462).

This dissertation is rooted in the third perspective: legitimacy-as-perception. Legitimacy-

as-perception is arguably the most complete of these perspectives, having the benefit of building

on the other two while integrating aspects of social psychology and micro-sociology. It addresses

the themes of both legitimacy-as-property and legitimacy-as-process while adding multiple

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levels and an institutional audience to the study of legitimacy. From this perspective, legitimacy

is “a multilevel social process that extends from perceptions of a legitimacy object by evaluators

to their judgments about it and eventually their actions based on that judgment, which in turn

produce macrolevel effects on the object” (Suddaby et al., 2017: 468). It still treats legitimacy as

a process, and legitimacy is still something which an organization seeks to acquire. However, the

process is more proximal to legitimacy in its focus on the audience—from which legitimacy

emerges—as opposed to agents, and instead of a property, legitimacy is understood as a

favorable assessment or judgment.

Dissertation summary

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Legitimacy is difficult to measure (Deephouse & Suchman, 2008; Vergne, 2011). The
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absence of a psychometrically sound and generalizable scale has led to a disproportionate

amount of work on the microfoundations of legitimacy that is either conceptual (e.g. Bitektine,
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2011; Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Haack, Pfarrer, & Scherer, 2014; Harmon, Green, & Goodnight,

2015; Hoefer & Green, 2016; Tost, 2011) or qualitative (e.g. Drori & Honig, 2013; Huy et al.,

2014; Treviño, den Nieuwenboer, Kreiner, & Bishop, 2014) with little in the way of
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measurement or hypothesis testing (e.g. Elsbach, 1994). In this dissertation, I aim to address this

shortcoming by developing a scale for legitimacy judgments (Chapter 2) and then using the scale

as part of two experiments (Chapters 3 and 4) focused on legitimacy and other microlevel

phenomena.

In chapter 2, I present the development and validation of a generalizable scale capable of

measuring legitimacy judgments. Items were generated drawing primarily on Suchman (1995)

and Tost (2011). Face validity of items was assessed by a panel of naïve judges given construct

definitions. Item reduction was conducted in tandem with exploratory factor analysis, which

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suggested a three-dimensional factor structure. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the three-

factor structure, indicating that legitimacy judgments exist along the three dimensions argued by

Tost (2011): moral legitimacy, instrumental legitimacy, and relational legitimacy.

In chapter 3, I leverage the scale developed in chapter 2 in an experiment integrating

legitimacy judgments and cultural values at the individual level. Institutional theory is primarily

a macro-level theory, and therefore the most useful microlevel research is that which examines

constructs and phenomena that can be aggregated to the field or societal levels. As institutional

theorists begin to delve into the microfoundations of legitimacy, the values of individual

evaluators become relevant, particularly those tied to culture since these values meaningfully

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aggregate to impact field and societal level structures (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010;
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Schwartz, 1992). Accordingly, in this study, I examine two well established cultural values—

universalism and achievement—and how they moderate the relationship between institutional
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rhetoric and legitimacy judgments.

In chapter 4, I present the results of both a survey and an experiment in a study of the

evaluated legitimacy of social enterprises and their ability to attract human resources. Because
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social enterprises exhibit institutional hybridity—that is, they are defined by multiple logics—

they can struggle to find employees able to work in such an institutionally complex environment

(Battilana & Dorado, 2010). Both because of their hybridity and because they are a novel

organizational form, they may also struggle with legitimacy (Dart, 2004), which in turn may

affect their ability to build an applicant pool (Williamson, 2000). Exacerbating this problem, the

education preparing students for employment in social enterprises occurs primarily within

business schools, a context in which one of the two logics relevant to social entrepreneurship—

market logic—dominates the other—prosocial logic. In order to better understand the

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implications of this, I first measure the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises and its

relationship to willingness to seek employment with social enterprises as it is affected by the

number of business school classes taken by the participant. I then conduct an experiment testing

differences in the evaluated legitimacy of traditional and social enterprises. I further look at how

association with a business school influences both the legitimacy judgments and subsequent

intention based on those judgments.

Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the three studies and concludes with some final

thoughts on the dissertation and legitimacy.

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 CHAPTER TWO: AN INSTRUMENT FOR MEASURING LEGITIMACY

JUDGEMENTS

In this chapter, I develop a generalizable, multidimensional scale of legitimacy

judgments—judgments which, in aggregate, constitute an overall perception of an organization

or practice’s appropriateness for its social context (Tost, 2011). This effort is part of a broader

movement by institutional theorists to attend to the microfoundations of institutions (Gehman,

Lounsbury, & Greenwood, 2016; Powell & Colyvas, 2008). Research on legitimacy has been at

the heart of this movement, with a number of studies focusing on discursive strategies of

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legitimacy (Brown, Ainsworth, & Grant, 2012; Green & Li, 2011, Green, Li, & Nohria, 2011;

Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Harmon, Green, & Goodnight, 2015; Maguire & Hardy, 2009, 2013;
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Moisander, Hirsto, & Fahy, 2016; Tracey, 2016; Vaara & Tienari, 2008, 2011) and the formation
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of individual legitimacy judgments (Bitektine, 2011; Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Haack, Pfarrer, &

Scherer, 2014; Hoefer & Green, 2016; Huy, Corley, & Kraatz, 2014; Moisander et al., 2016;

Sieweke & Haack, 2018; Tost, 2011).

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However, as pointed out by Powell and Colyvas (2008), the study of legitimacy has been

defined by theory and exploratory case studies; very rarely is legitimacy operationalized for

hypothesis testing, in part due to the difficulty in measuring legitimacy (Deephouse & Suchman,

2008; Deephouse, Bundy, Tost, & Suchman, 2017; Vergne, 2011)1. As a result, the study of

legitimacy may have reached somewhat of a bottleneck, with conceptual and qualitative work

dominating quantitative work and macro conceptual and quantitative work dominating micro

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Since beginning this dissertation, two scales of legitimacy have been published. Bitektine, Song, Hill, and
Vanderberghe (2020) present a scale which measures cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. Alexiou and Wiggins
(2019) present a scale which measures cognitive, pragmatic (instrumental), and moral legitimacy.

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quantitative work despite commensurate interest in theory and qualitative research (Figure 1).

The number of microlevel theory and qualitative papers published confirms Powell and

Colyvas’s prediction, but the disparity between the numbers of these pieces and the number of

quantitative pieces is a reflection of the difficulty in measuring institutional theory’s most central

concept.

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40

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Micro
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Theory Qualitative Quantitative

Figure 1: Interest in legitimacy 2005-2016

Papers with institutional legitimacy is a core construct published in Academy of Management Review, Academy of
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Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Organization Studies, and Journal of
Management Studies. To be included, the paper needed to either include “legitimacy” and “institutions” or
“institutional theory” as a key word or include “institutions” or “institutional theory” as a key word and use legitimacy
as the primary driver of the explored topic.

Legitimacy is at the very heart of institutional theory: it motivates Meyer and Rowan’s

(1977) argument that conforming to “rationalized myths” of organizing, regardless of technical

merit, was rational because doing so conferred legitimacy. As institutional theorists began

studying institutional change, legitimacy became even more significant. Successful institutional

change requires the acquisition of legitimacy.

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 Legitimacy judgments, in aggregate, constitute an overall perception of an organization

or practice’s appropriateness for its social context (Tost, 2011). In this, their formation is a

significant process in the study of microfoundations of institutions, examinations of how

“institutions are sustained, altered, and extinguished as they are enacted by individuals in

concrete social situations (Powell & Colyvas, 2008: 2). The sustainment of institutions is largely

the domain of cognitive legitimacy, which itself is not an evaluative judgment in the sense that

cognitive resources are directed towards assessing whether an entity is appropriate for its

context. A significant source of institutional stability is the fact that institutionalized practices are

not evaluated. However, the alteration and extinguishing of institutions are both processes of

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institutional change, rather than sustainment. Here, structures and practices evaluated are not
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taken for granted, and instead, their legitimacy is actively evaluated by institutional stakeholders.

The most immediate and important outcomes of these evaluations is the support for and
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subsequent success of institutional change.

However, the methodological quiver from which institutional theorists may draw when

conducting quantitative, microfoundational research is alarmingly spare (Bitektine, Hill, Song, &
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Vanderberghe, 2020). It is my hope that this scale represents a powerful arrow which can help

balance our microinstitutional theory building with quantitative theory testing.

For the initial instrument, I generated 46 items drawing primarily from the legitimacy

typologies of Suchman (1995) and Tost (2011). I used exploratory factor analysis (n=429) to

determine the dimensionality of the scale as well as to reduce the number of items. Confirmatory

factor analysis conducted with a different sample (n=346) in a different setting confirmed a 14

item, three-dimensional scale which aligns with Tost’s (2011) instrumental, moral, and relational

legitimacy dimensions.

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Legitimacy

Institutions and legitimacy The study of legitimacy dates back to Weber (1968) and has

been described as the most central concept in institutional research (Colyvas & Powell, 2006;

Deephouse & Suchman, 2008). It is core to institutional change (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005),

as change cannot become institutionalized if it is deemed illegitimate by important institutional

stakeholders (Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Tost,

2011). The definition of legitimacy has evolved over the last several decades, but at its core,

legitimacy refers to the degree with which some entity is “appropriate for its social context”

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(Tost, 2011: 688).
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Highly legitimate entities gain several benefits from their legitimacy; most significant of

these is that they can become institutionalized, taken for granted and unquestioned (Bitektine &
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Haack, 2015; Tost, 2011), and their inefficiencies then go unnoticed (Sine & David, 2003). In

addition, legitimacy allows greater access to resources (Baum & Oliver, 1991; Drori & Honig,

2013; Wry, Lounsbury & Glynn, 2011; Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002), as stakeholders are reluctant
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to invest in organizations and endeavors they consider illegitimate, and serves to insulate entities

from negative external influence (Bansal & Clelland, 2004; Desai, 2008) so that the survival and

diffusion of some entity has become the most visible outcome of legitimacy (Suddaby, Bitektine,

& Haack, 2017; Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002).

Legitimacy judgments Though entities which possess high levels of cognitive

legitimacy—that is, they are taken-for-granted and unquestioned—are spared scrutiny (Suchman,

1995), the degree of social appropriateness for those entities lacking cognitive legitimacy often

requires active assessment, or a legitimacy judgment, by important institutional stakeholders. A

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legitimacy judgment is an individual’s evaluation of the appropriateness of some entity in a

given social context (Tost, 2011) and is influenced by the evaluator’s personal values and beliefs

(Finch, Deephouse, & Varella, 2015). Entities subject to legitimacy judgments are numerous

(Deephouse & Suchman, 2008; Ruef & Scott, 1998), though most commonly they are

organizational forms (e.g., social enterprises; Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011), practices (e.g.,

multidisciplinary practices in accounting firms; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), and structures

(e.g., the role of nurse practitioners; Reay, Golden-Biddle, & Germann, 2006). Similarly,

evaluating audiences are numerous and can be external—such as investors (Bansal & Clelland,

2004; Bell, Filatotchev, & Aguilera, 2014; Drori & Honig, 2013; Pollock & Rindova, 2003),

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regulators (Deephouse, 1996; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005); the media (Bansal & Clelland,
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2004; Deephouse, 1996; Nigam & Ocasio, 2010; York, Hargrave, & Pacheco, 2016); and

professional associations (Greenwood et al., 2002; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2006; Westphal,
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Gulati, & Shortell, 1997)—as well as internal, including employees, colleagues, and

management (e.g. Drori & Honig, 2013; Huy et al., 2014; Reay et al., 2006; Treviño, den

Niewenboer, Kreiner, & Bishop, 2014).

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Suchman (1995) presents three types of legitimacy: cognitive legitimacy, pragmatic

legitimacy, and moral legitimacy. Drawing on this typology, Tost (2011) suggests that

legitimacy judgments primarily rest along three dimensions: a moral dimension, an instrumental

(pragmatic) dimension, and a relational dimension. She departs from Suchman’s typology with

the addition of relational legitimacy and the argument that cognitive legitimacy does not

constitute a judgment but is instead a quality an entity possesses which spares it from judgment.

An organization which possesses cognitive legitimacy is taken-for-granted and unquestioned

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(Greenwood et al., 2002; Suchman, 1995) and is therefore not subject to judgment. Indeed,

cognitive legitimacy may in fact suppress judgment (Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Tost, 2011).

Moral legitimacy is motivated by pro-social logic and bestowed when the entity is

perceived as “doing the right things” or as “the right way to be” (Bitektine, 2011; Suchman,

1995; Tost, 2011). Such judgments are directed towards the worthiness of goals and the propriety

of practices, structures, and leaders (Suchman, 1995). For example, social enterprises may seek

legitimacy from the broader public by emphasizing the benefit of their activities to society at

large, as described in Tracey, Phillips, and Jarvis’ (2011) study, in which the founders of Aspire,

a social enterprise aiming to provide employment to the homeless, tied their efforts to national

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dialogues highlighting the need to improve conditions for the homeless population in England .
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Similarly, entities can gain moral legitimacy through congruence with relevant field or

organizational values (Greenwood et al., 2002; Maguire, Hardy & Lawrence, 2004; Suddaby &
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Greenwood, 2005). For example, the Big Five accounting firms legitimated multidisciplinary

practices along a moral dimension by highlighting its congruence with a central value in

accounting, customer service (Greenwood et al., 2002; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005).
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Judgments of instrumental legitimacy are primarily driven by self-interest (Bitektine,

2011; Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011). In bridging institutional theory and social psychology, Tost

specifies instrumental legitimacy as centered on material self-interest as opposed to emotional

self-interest, which falls into her conceptualization of relational legitimacy. While Suchman does

not specify material self-interest in his explanation of pragmatic legitimacy, the use of his

conceptualization by subsequent researchers has been primarily material in its focus on outcomes

or on the efficiency of processes. In evaluating legitimacy on this basis, an audience considers

how the entity benefits them or others like them, whether the entity (or associated actors) have

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their best interests at heart, and the degree of influence they have with the entity, which may

reassure constituents that the entity will work towards their interests. For example, the

HIV/AIDS community bestowed greater legitimacy on organizations with HIV positive members

in leadership positions than those they perceived as being driven more by profit because they

trusted that the former organizations where more likely to have their best interests at heart

(Maguire et al., 2004). In a study of nurse practitioners, Reay and colleagues (2006) recorded

how doctors’ legitimacy judgments of the nurse practitioner role were influenced by the extent to

which nurse practitioners could benefit them, making their jobs easier. Similarly, ethics and

compliance officers needed to demonstrate the practical utility of their function, that their actions

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improved the company’s bottom line, in order to legitimate their role (Treviño et al., 2014).
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Finally, relational legitimacy is gained when the entity affirms an evaluator’s identity,

and boosts self-worth and self-esteem (Tost, 2011). To date, the literature addressing relational
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legitimacy has focused primarily on internal stakeholders (Brown & Toyoki, 2013; Drori &

Honig, 2013; Gawer & Phillips, 2013; Huy et al., 2014; Treviño et al., 2014), as the relationship

between internal stakeholders and an organization will likely be more core to the stakeholders’
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self-concepts than that between an organization and its external stakeholders. For example, ethics

and compliance officers gained legitimacy on relational grounds by making an effort to develop

relationships with employees, building up their importance (Treviño et al, 2014), and Intel

created buy-in by crafting identities around a change designed to enhance the self-esteem its

internal stakeholders (Gawer & Phillips, 2013). Conversely, a design firm lost relational

legitimacy as graphic designers felt their role to be deprioritized relative to software engineers

and programmers (Drori & Honig, 2013), and a major change initiative lost support from middle

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managers as they felt they were receiving little support or personal consideration from the top

management team spearheading the change (Huy et al., 2014).

It should be noted that relational legitimacy is not studied as often as moral and

instrumental legitimacies. In part, its introduction to institutional theory is new, but there are also

a number of likely antecedents shared with instrumental or moral legitimacies (Deephouse,

Bundy, Tost, & Suchman, 2017). It should be noted, however, that overlap in the three

dimensions is consistent with the theory of legitimacy judgment (Tost, 2011: 694). Nevertheless,

most of the circumstances described in the extant literature on relational legitimacy are not those

normally affiliated with either instrumental or moral legitimacy, and the theory as well as the

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empirical, qualitative research suggest this is an independent dimension on which an overall

legitimacy judgment is made.

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MEASURING LEGITIMACY
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Previous measures of legitimacy

Legitimacy is a nebulous construct which does not easily lend itself to measurement

(Ruef & Scott, 1998; Suddaby et al., 2017). Though there are a number of studies
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operationalizing legitimacy, particularly at the macro level, there is little consensus on the

appropriate measure (Vergne, 2011), and there is a general tendency to speak of legitimacy

generally rather than addressing specific components or approaches (Sieweke & Haack, 2018;

Suddaby et al., 2017).

Though legitimacy is regularly operationalized at the organizational field level, there is

increased movement towards its measurement at a individual level (Deephouse, Bundy, Tost, &

Suchman, 2017; Suddaby et al. 2017). One approach has been to use surveys to measure the

validity of some entity (e.g. Elsbach, 1994; Nagy, Pollack, & Rutherford, 2012; Pollock,

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Rutherford, & Nagy, 2012), which refers to the degree with which society at large views an

entity as legitimate (Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Tost, 2011). In an early example, Elsbach’s

(1994) study of the cattle industry used a 12-item scale to measure legitimacy perceptions, with

items such as The general public approves of the organization’s operating procedures and The

organization is viewed by business writers as one of the top firms in the industry. These

measures do not capture a legitimacy judgment, but rather validity, a construct that influences

legitimacy judgments (Bitektine & Haack, 2015).

As seen in Table 1 below, there have also been several studies which measure the

propriety of an entity, that is, the degree with which evaluators themselves feel an entity to be

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legitimate. However, common in these studies are psychometric or theoretical issues which make
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them difficult to adapt for further use For example, Díez -Martin and coauthors (Díez -Martin,

Prado-Roman, & Blanco- González, 2013) use a 12 item survey to measure cognitive, pragmatic,
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and moral propriety and validity. However, their sample size (n = 17) is very small, the

reliabilities of their dimensions low, and they do not perform any factor analysis, a standard

approach for measure development (Hinkin, 1998). Others treat legitimacy judgment as a one
PR

dimensional construct, measuring overall legitimacy and ignoring its constituent dimensions (e.g.

Chung, Berger, & DeCoster, 2016; Finch et al., 2015; Weisburd, Hinkle, Famega, & Ready,

2011), even though scholars have recognized that an evaluator may judge an entity illegitimate

on pragmatic grounds while legitimate on moral grounds (Tost, 2011). Still others include

cognitive legitimacy as a substantive dimension (e.g. Díez -Martin et al., 2013; Foreman &

Whetten, 2002). For example, Foreman and Whetten’s (2002) study of farming co-ops, though

psychometrically sound, create a scale to measure individual perceptions of the cognitive and

pragmatic legitimacy of the co-ops.

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 Table 1: Existing measures of legitimacy judgments
Study Description of legitimacy EFA CFA Instrumental Moral Relational
judgment legitimacy legitimacy legitimacy
Chung, Berger, & Judgment of overall X
DeCoster, 2016 legitimacy of the
pharmaceutical industry

Diez-Martin, Judgment of pragmatic and X X

Prado-Roman, & moral legitimacy and
Blanco-Gonzalez, perception cognitive
2013 legitimacy

Finch, Deephouse, Judgment of overall X X

& Varella, 2015 legitimacy of oil sands
industry

Foreman & Perception of cognitive X X X

Whetten, 2002 legitimacy and judgment of
pragmatic legitimacy of
farming co-ops

Weisburd, Hinkle, Judgment of overall

W
Famega, & Ready, legitimacy of police
2011
Bitektine, Song, Cognitive and sociopolitical X X
Hill, & Vander- legitimacy (generalized)
IE
berghe, 2020

Alexiou & Cognitive, instrumental, X X X X

Wiggins, 2019 and moral legitimacy
(generalized)
EV

Two recent studies have presented measures of individual legitimacy judgments.

Bitektine et al. (2020) validate a scale measuring cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy, and
PR

Alexiou and Wiggins (2019) validate a scale measuring cognitive, instrumental, and moral

legitimacy. However, neither scale measures relational legitimacy, and both scales have items

confounding validity, either explicitly (e.g., “The general public would approve of this

organization’s policies and procedures” (Alexiou & Wiggins, 2019)) or potentially (“This

company follows the best management practices” (Bitketine et al., 2020); see Haack & Sieweke,

2020)).

Item Generation

In light of the abovementioned issues, I developed the instrument developed with two

primary considerations in mind: one, accurately capturing typologies of Suchman (1995) and

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