Kostova,T. and Zaheer,S.(1999),Organizational Legitimacy under Conditions of Complexity: The Case of the Multinational Enterprise

What is "legitimacy"?




This article deals with “legitimacy”, being correct or allowable, or operating according to the law. In the article, there are only a few example of legitimacy, there are 10 clear propositions. They were acceptable for me because I necessarily got same feeling about MNEs when they entering Japanese market.

The propositions say it is more difficult for MNEs or their subunits to establish and maintain their legitimacy than domestic firms, and bigger the MNEs, greater the difficulty become. If they have other experience in establishing legitimacy the process become easier, but more distance between their home country and host country, more difficult it becomes. A lot of things, parent company’s activity or home country’s stereotype images or other firm in same organizational classes, has spillover effect in establishing legitimacy, but if local firm is less legitimate, it has positive effect to MNEs in same area

This is very interesting but its I feel it less economic, because we can not judge extent of the ”legitimacy” in figure.


URL:http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/l/legitimacy.asp