A case study of the legitimation process undertaken to gain support for an information system in a Chinese university

Donal Flynn and Yongqin Du

European Journal of Information Systems, 2012, vol. 21, issue 3, 212-228

Abstract: This research examines the legitimation process that was undertaken to gain stakeholder support for the development of a smartcard system for student services at a local university in China. We employed a theoretical framework consisting of Suchman's typology of legitimacy and the Legitimation Activity Model (LAM) for sense-making of the process. We obtained insights into how legitimation of the system was gained, maintained and repaired through the project team's strategic actions. We conceptualized the rotation of legitimation gaining, maintaining and repairing activities in the project and make suggestions for improving the LAM. We emphasize that monitoring and evaluating legitimation is a dynamic, continuous process, involving the concept of legitimation status, and linking the planned actions of legitimation- gaining and responsive actions for legitimation maintaining and repairing. We suggest that to achieve legitimation for information systems, managers should plan strategies to construct and present an appropriate image of the system, in which stakeholders perceive that it meets their needs, and, in addition, closely monitor the status of legitimation granted over a continuous period. This is because legitimation is a ‘fragile flower’ that may wilt if not attended to adequately.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2011.27 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:21:y:2012:i:3:p:212-228

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2011.27

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().