Employing Enviropreneurial Marketing Strategies to Gain Legitimacy

Abstract

Within the current global landscape, internationalizing organizations are increasingly seeking ways to gain legitimacy, or social acceptance, within the foreign markets they exist in. This current article proposes that enviropreneurial marketing strategies can be placed in the arsenal of tools firms may employ to gain organizational legitimacy. Across two studies, this article hypothesizes and empirically tests the mediating roles that pragmatic and moral legitimacy play in the relationships between enviropreneurial marketing and outcomes on firm constituents such as consumers and employees. The results show that while pragmatic legitimacy is a significant mediator of such relationships, moral legitimacy is not.

The Influence of Industrial Role Positioning Strategy in Place Brand Internationalization on the Purchase Intention of Host Country Consumers from the Perspective of Moral Legitimacy

“…In institutional theory, moral legitimacy reflects a positive evaluation of organizations and their activities at the normative level, which enhances the perception of the organization's trustworthiness [6,14]. Role positioning constructed by organizations at the moral level can promote the acceptability of target audiences [12]. Moral legitimacy can be obtained through the manipulation of structural, procedural and outcome legitimation [14].…”

“…In essence, the key to the overall regional competitiveness lies in the social acceptance of regional industry [13]. The moral legitimacy derived from institutional theory expresses a pro-social value orientation [14], which enhances perceptions of justification and trust [6] and leads to consumers' willingness to purchase [12]. Thus, moral legitimacy theory can provide a new research perspective for exploring regional industrial role positioning strategies aimed at obtaining host country consumers' purchase intention.…”

MNEs’ corporate governance disclosure: a strategic response to corrupt environments

“…Questions about the interest of EM-MNEs in protecting rights or honoring their contracts make it difficult for stakeholders (e.g. customers or civil society) to anticipate or recognize the goodness of these firms (Randrianasolo, 2021). Stakeholders expect EM-MNEs not to follow the ethics rules, which, in turn, triggers a sense of risk that these MNEs do not will respect their interests (Cuervo-Cazurra et al , 2021; Distelhorst and McGahan, 2021; Escobar-Sierra et al , 2021).…”