Legitimating the legitimate: A grounded theory study of legitimacy work among Ethics and Compliance Officers

Linda Klebe Treviño, Niki A. den Nieuwenboer, Glen E. Kreiner and Derron G. Bishop

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2014, vol. 123, issue 2, 186-205

Abstract: Organizations have responded to ethical scandals in part by creating the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) role to help insure employee ethical and legal behavior. Because ECO work is so fundamental to behavioral ethics in organizations and we know very little about it, we conducted a grounded theory study to learn more. We learned that, although most ECOs were hired to help their organizations respond to external legitimacy challenges, ECOs face major legitimacy challenges inside their organizations. Facilitating conditions may reduce these challenges and help ECOs reach internal legitimacy. But, we also found that ECOs engage in what we term legitimacy work that relies on a number of tactics to help them gain legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents. We tie our findings to the broader legitimacy literature and draw implications for the behavioral ethics literature.

Keywords: Behavioral ethics; Cognitive legitimacy; Compliance Officer; Ethics Officer; Ethics programs; Legitimacy; Instrumental legitimacy; Moral legitimacy; Organizational ethics; Relational legitimacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:123:y:2014:i:2:p:186-205

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.009

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