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Judgements of SMEs’ Legitimacy and Its Sources

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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.

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Notes

  1. Codes, such as ‘creativity’ and ‘France’ were also frequently associated with the code legitimacy. Nevertheless, they were not considered by the researchers, because the analysis of the query reports showed that they do not relate to the code ‘legitimacy’ in a relevant way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICN Business School, CEREFIGE, 86 rue du Sergent Blandan, CS 70148, 54003, Nancy Cedex, France

    Olga Ivanova Ruffo, Kamel Mnisri & Christine Morin-Esteves

  2. Université du Québec à Montréal, CEREFIGE, C.P. 8888, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Corinne Gendron

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  1. Olga Ivanova Ruffo
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  2. Kamel Mnisri
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  3. Christine Morin-Esteves
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  4. Corinne Gendron
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Correspondence to Olga Ivanova Ruffo.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Ivanova Ruffo, O., Mnisri, K., Morin-Esteves, C. et al. Judgements of SMEs’ Legitimacy and Its Sources. J Bus Ethics 165, 395–410 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4063-3

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