Ups and Downs: The Role of Legitimacy Judgment Cues in Practice Implementation
研究大型企业子公司如何根据合法性的有效性和适当性线索，决定增加或减少企业社会责任实践的实施，发现环境认可比母公司授权更重要，且适当性维度的一致性影响实施增减。
We explore the way validity and propriety cues contribute to legitimacy judgments about a practice and to explaining whether the subunit of a large firm increases or decreases the implementation of this practice. Empirically, we examine the extent to which 65 subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise implemented three corporate social responsibility practices. Adopting a set-theoretic approach, we find that both validity and propriety cues are extremely relevant to the understanding of subunits’ implementation of practices over time. The endorsement of a practice in a subunit’s environment plays a particularly crucial role in the extent to which it is implemented, relative to authorization by the parent firm. Furthermore, subunits strongly rely on the active evaluation of the practice’s propriety, such that the consonance between the two propriety dimensions (strategic importance and value compatibility) is central to implementation increase, while dissonance between them can favor implementation decrease. By advancing our understanding of legitimacy judgment formation and practice implementation patterns, our study enriches explanations of organizational conformity and decoupling, and contributes to our understanding of how firms respond to multiple institutional demands.