Legitimacy tests – moments when an organization’s activities are critically questioned by evaluating audiences – are a frequent occurrence in today’s complex societies. In our paper, “Legitimacy tests: Theorizing legitimacy as justification work,” we offer a novel framework that conceptualizes legitimacy as ‘justification work’, the process that links organizational actions to higher-order societal principles. We draw on the concept of orders of worth (culturally available ‘orders’ like market, efficiency or public welfare) to explain the persuasive power and potential conflicts underpinning organizational accounts.
This research enriches current explanations by specifying the cultural value systems that inform responses to legitimacy tests. First, we explore how legitimacy tests arise and how focal organizations mobilize orders of worth through both discursive and material account giving. Second, we theorize the use of complexifying accounts as tests evolve, which serves to decrease the initial polarization between challengers and focal organizations. Third, we investigate the conditions for the settlement of legitimacy tests, emphasizing social actors’ competence in mobilizing appropriate orders of worth and successfully aligning situational evidence with established societal categories of value.
Our study provides a comprehensive, process-based understanding of how organizations repair breaches and reaffirm their commitments by linking their actions to fundamental societal value systems.