The Moral Legitimacy of NGOs as Partners of Corporations

Baur, Dorothea; Palazzo, Guido

doi:10.5840/beq201121437

Cited by 120 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 105 publications

(95 reference statements)

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“…The pragmatic type of legitimacy rests on "the self-interested calculations of an organization's most immediate audiences" (Suchman, 1995, p. 578); put differently, it rests on judgments about whether a given activity benefits the specific stakeholder groups that, in turn, legitimise the firm's operations and its overall purpose of existence. In the context of this study's objectives, pragmatic legitimacy would denote an MNE's ability to respond to the expectations of its immediately relevant audiences (Baur and Palazzo, 2011); whether it be supporting the participants of a grassroots sports initiative, renovating a local sports facility, backing-up a sport team's social cause campaign through financial or in-kind support for a sporting event, and so on. Thus, rather than either evaluating "the consequences, techniques and procedures, structures and leader behaviors" (Suchman 1995, p. 579 (Suchman 1995, p. 578).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate social responsibility through sport: a longitudinal study of the FTSE100 companies

Bason

Anagnostopoulos

2015

Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal

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Purpose -Under growing public scrutiny of their behaviour, the vast majority of multinational enterprises have been undertaking significant investments through corporate social responsibility in order to close legitimacy gaps. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive account of the nature and scope of MNEs' CSR programmes that have sport at their core. More specifically, the present study addresses the following questions: (1) How do FTSE-100 firms utilise sport as part of their CSR agendas? (2) How do different industries have different approaches to CSR through sport? and (3) Can the types of CSR through sport be classified?Design/methodology/approach -Centred on legitimacy theory and exploratory in nature, the study employed a content analysis method, and examined three types of document from each of the FTSE100 firms, namely, annual reports, annual reviews and CSR reports over the ten-year period from 2003 to 2012. In total, 1,473 documents were content analysed, thereby offering a sound representation of CSR disclosure of the FTSE100. 2 of reliable conclusions problematic. Particularly, the lack of an explicit focus on longitudinality is a typical limitation, meaning that no conclusions can be made regarding the trend. The study outlined in this paper offers the most comprehensive longitudinal study of CSR through sport to date, and thus contributes to the increasing volume of literature that examines the application of CSR in relation to the sport sector.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate social responsibility through sport: a longitudinal study of the FTSE100 companies

Bason

Anagnostopoulos

2015

Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal

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“…Some normative stakeholder theorists also point to broader community perceptions as a basis for deciding which stakeholder claims to address. For example, Baur and Palazzo (2011) emphasize that legitimacy depends on the stakeholder's discourse and engagement in broader communities. Integrating both instrumental and normative approaches, Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997) propose a model for identifying and evaluating the salience of stakeholder claims based on urgency, power, and legitimacy.…”

Section: Stakeholder Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprises

Gonin

Besharov

Smith

2013

AMPROC

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In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon. Michael GoninUniversity of Zurich and University of Lausanne Marya L. BesharovCornell University ABSTRACT: In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon.

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“…Finally, the paper contributes to a burgeoning literature on the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of other phenomena such as codes of ethics (Long and Driscoll 2008), social enterprise (Dart 2004), NGOs as partners of industry (Baur and Palazzo 2011), regulatory regimes (Black 2008) or controversial projects (Melé and Armengou 2015). This literature recognizes that pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy do not always go together.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Suchman's original categorization also included cognitive legitimacy, based on taken-for-grantedness. However, cognitive legitimacy is less useful in evaluating ISR because of the lack of stable and shared assumptions about industry's role in governance (Baur and Palazzo 2011). Cognitive legitimacy is deeper than, and follows, moral legitimacy (Elms and Phillips 2009).…”

Section: The Legitimacy Of Industry Self-regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have applied Suchman's distinction between pragmatic and moral legitimacy in related contexts such as implementing codes of ethics (Long and Driscoll 2008), social enterprise (Dart 2004), NGOs as partners of industry (Baur and Palazzo 2011), or of regulatory regimes (Black 2008). Some prior studies have also examined whether particular ISR schemes have pragmatic and moral legitimacy, as in the case of Schepers' (2010) and Cashore's (2002) evaluations of the Forest Stewardship Council.…”

Section: The Legitimacy Of Industry Self-regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Marking Their Own Homework: The Pragmatic and Moral Legitimacy of Industry Self-Regulation

Bowen

2017

J Bus Ethics

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When is industry self-regulation (ISR) a legitimate form of governance? In principle, ISR can serve the interests of participating companies, regulators and other stakeholders. However, in practice, empirical evidence shows that ISR schemes often under-perform, leading to criticism that such schemes are tantamount to firms marking their own homework. In response, this paper explains how current management theory on ISR has failed to separate the pragmatic legitimacy of ISR based on selfinterested calculations, from moral legitimacy based on normative approval. The paper traces three families of management theory on ISR and uses these to map the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes. It identifies tensions between the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes, which the current ISR literature does not address, and draws implications for the future theory and practice of ISR.

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The Moral Legitimacy of NGOs as Partners of Corporations

Cited by 120 publications

References 105 publications

Corporate social responsibility through sport: a longitudinal study of the FTSE100 companies

Corporate social responsibility through sport: a longitudinal study of the FTSE100 companies

Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprises

Marking Their Own Homework: The Pragmatic and Moral Legitimacy of Industry Self-Regulation

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