Judgements of SMEs’ Legitimacy and Its Sources

Olga Ivanova Ruffo (), Kamel Mnisri (), Christine Morin-Esteves and Corinne Gendron
Additional contact information
Olga Ivanova Ruffo: ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine
Kamel Mnisri: ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine
Christine Morin-Esteves: ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine
Corinne Gendron: UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Organizational legitimacy is an important resource, which provides access to other resources. As such, it impacts the survival chances of organizations. In this study, we examine the individual judgments of the owner-managers of small-and-medium size enterprises (SMEs) of the legitimacy of their own enterprise as well as their perception of the legitimacy evaluations of relevant stakeholders. This research is based on interviews with owner-managers of SMEs located in the Lorraine region of France. The results show that when legitimacy is perceived as acquired, their judgments are based on instrumental, relational and moral evaluations, whereas when legitimacy is perceived as being deferred, judgement is based on mainly instrumental evaluations and when they report not being in position to judge their own legitimacy, their judgements are based on moral evaluations. In addition, the legitimacy judgements employed are associated with the different types of legitimacy sought by the SME owner-managers. Moreover, they perceive the validity cues coming from clients and employees as the most important sources of legitimacy. Other stakeholders are accorded secondary importance in granting legitimacy.

Keywords: Legitimacy-as-perception; SMEs; Owner-managers; Stakeholder theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, 165, pp.395-410. ⟨10.1007/s10551-018-4063-3⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-01992961

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-4063-3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().