TY - JOUR
T1 - Civil Society Organizations
T2 - The Site of Legitimizing the Common Good. A literature review
AU - Egholm, Liv
AU - Heyse, Liesbet
AU - Mourey, Damien
PY - 2020/2
Y1 - 2020/2
N2 - The concept of legitimacy—i.e., being regarded as “lawful, admissible, and justified” (Edwards in NGO rights and responsibilities: a new deal for global governance, The Foreign Policy Center, London, 2000)—is pivotal within civil society research. Recently, the concept has applied to wider notions concerning the civil sphere and civic action. The introductory article of this special issue aims to provide an overview of conceptualizations of legitimacy within civil society research and to point at new avenues for future research. We depart from Suddaby et al.’s (Acad Manag Ann 11(1):451–478, 2017) configurations of legitimacy within management literature: as property, perception, and process. While these configurations are also reflected in civil society literature, with legitimacy as property being prominent, they do not capture the full scope of civil society literature on legitimacy, given its multidisciplinary nature, its inclusion of multiple levels of analysis, and the presence of complementary conceptualizations of legitimacy. We posit that the legitimacy-as-relations-in-processes perspective is valuable for advancing research in civil society organizations.
AB - The concept of legitimacy—i.e., being regarded as “lawful, admissible, and justified” (Edwards in NGO rights and responsibilities: a new deal for global governance, The Foreign Policy Center, London, 2000)—is pivotal within civil society research. Recently, the concept has applied to wider notions concerning the civil sphere and civic action. The introductory article of this special issue aims to provide an overview of conceptualizations of legitimacy within civil society research and to point at new avenues for future research. We depart from Suddaby et al.’s (Acad Manag Ann 11(1):451–478, 2017) configurations of legitimacy within management literature: as property, perception, and process. While these configurations are also reflected in civil society literature, with legitimacy as property being prominent, they do not capture the full scope of civil society literature on legitimacy, given its multidisciplinary nature, its inclusion of multiple levels of analysis, and the presence of complementary conceptualizations of legitimacy. We posit that the legitimacy-as-relations-in-processes perspective is valuable for advancing research in civil society organizations.
KW - NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
KW - SOCIAL ENTERPRISES
KW - RESOURCE DEPENDENCE
KW - NGO LEGITIMACY
KW - PUBLIC SPHERE
KW - ACCOUNTABILITY
KW - IMPACT
KW - GOVERNANCE
KW - DEMOCRACY
KW - REPRESENTATION
U2 - 10.1007/s11266-019-00171-y
DO - 10.1007/s11266-019-00171-y
M3 - Article
SN - 1573-7888
VL - 31
SP - 1
EP - 18
JO - VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations
JF - VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations
IS - 1
ER -