"...purpose of PR is to ... maintain Organizational Legitimacy” (W?RAAS, 2009:318). Do you think this statement is supported by PR theory & practice?

Introduction

“[…] establishing and maintaining organizational legitimacy

is at the core of most, in not all, public relations activities.”

(Metzler, 2001:321)

Metzler (2001:322) inspired by Weber, defines legitimacy as the “right to exist and conduct operations”. If someone acknowledges that public relations (PR) deals to a great extent with establishing good relations with the public, and that these relations are the basis for organizations’ survival and prolonged existence, then “we can easily argue that public relations is about obtaining and preserving legitimacy” (W?raas, 2007:283). The objective of obtaining and maintaining external support is not something new in PR and goes to the core of the field (ibid.). The belief that PR is a management function responsible for identifying and preserving relationships between an organization and its social environment has come to embody one of the most important perspectives (ecological perspective of PR) to “organize PR theory and practice” (Everett, 2001:311). Yet, only a small number of theorists have clearly seen the idea of legitimacy as relevant for PR or as the core function of it (Holmstr?m, 2005, Jensen, 1997, Metzler, 2001, Ronneberger, 1977).

 This essay will try to show that organizational legitimacy should be a “foundational concept” (Boyd, 2000:342) of PR and will argue for greater recognition of Metzler’s (2001:321) declaration concerning the “centrality of organizational legitimacy to public relations practice”. Nevertheless, to effectively address the credibility of this position, one must first outline its key term, organizational legitimacy, and then discussed it in conjunction with contemporary PR theory and practice.

 1.     Defining Organizational Legitimacy

Organizational legitimacy has been researched through a different range of theoretical spectrums, including institutional theory (Ruef and Scott, 1998; Scott et al., 2000), resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978), and organizational ecology (Aldrich, 1979; Aldrich and Marsden, 1988; Hannan and Freeman, 1989). Suchman (1995:574) characterises organizational legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions”.  Pfeffer (1978:159) gives a simpler definition for organizational legitimacy by claiming that organizational legitimacy is the “congruence between social values and organizational actions”. In general, organizational legitimacy is understood to result from constancy to societal expectations (Deephouse and Carter, 2005). Indeed, someone can assert that, to an organization, legitimacy outlines the boundaries for decisions that are assumed as socially acceptable in a given time and context (Holmstr?m, 2005:498).

 1.1      Relationship of organizational legitimacy to organizations and environments

Consequently, we can presume from the aforementioned definitions that legitimacy is considered to be an asset that maintains the flow of resources from the environment to the organization (Hannan & Freeman, 1989). In considering the above, Dowling and Pfeffer (1975) argue that organizations can establish legitimacy in three ways: conform to existing social norms, alter social norms and identify with social values. They also clarify that the modification of the social norms and values constitute a motivation for organizational change and source of pressure for organizational legitimation (ibid., p.125). Interestingly enough, Habermas (1979:178-79) comments that legitimacy usually is not an issue until it is questioned: “the concept is used above all in situations in which legitimacy of an order is disputed, in which, as we say, legitimation problems arise”. Indeed, actions that constitute withdrawal of consent or actual dissent, such as campaigns, boycotts, demonstrations, or strikes, usually are very noticeable, even to the external publics. Metzler (2001:323) argues that situations such as these are “what PR scholars and practitioners need to investigate”.

  Stakeholder perceptions of organizational legitimacy

Organizational adjustment and adaptation

(Structural and procedural change)

Environmental influences and responses

(Stakeholders behaviour)

  Figure 1: Theoretical positioning of organizational legitimacy (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005)

 On the whole, it could be said that organizational legitimacy is the outlined picture of the relationship between an organization and its environment (figure 1). Weber (1968) emphasises the significance of legitimacy with his perception that legitimate order guided social action. Parsons (1960) claims that organizations, which pursue objectives in proportion to social values have a legitimate claim on resources. Moreover, Dowling and Pfeffer (1975) argue that organizational legitimation efforts make the explanation of the organizational adjustment to the environment easier. What is more, several scholars propose different types of legitimacy. Suchman (1995), for example, locates three types of legitimacy: pragmatic, moral, and cognitive, whereas Scott et al. (2000) constructs a typology of legitimacy, where each type of legitimacy operates within a different standard for evaluating legitimacy. Patel, Xavier and Broom (2005) suggest that the different types of legitimacy provide more than just a significant connection between organizations and their environments. Finally, as the above discussion has illustrated, this essay situates legitimacy at an organizational level, which is equivalent to most PR literature and practice (ibid.).

 2.     Organizational Legitimacy in PR Theory and Practice

Organizational legitimacy has not been accepted extensively by PR scholars as a long-standing objective of building organization-public relationships (Ihlen and van Ruler, 2007; Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005). However, Holmst?m (2005:497) states that the role of PR “can be seen as organizational legitimization in interrelation to different and changing forms of societal coordination”. Heath (2001:3) indicates that “legitimacy gaps”, will belong in the emerging vocabulary of PR scholars and practitioners as the discipline concentrates more on relationship management. Heath (1997) claims that legitimacy gap may occur when different perceptions exist regarding what companies are doing, and what the community expects that they ought to be doing. Sethi (1994) clarifies that legitimacy gaps can cause problems with perceptions of the legitimacy of the organization itself. Indeed, the relationship of the public with an organization can collapse, if the organization is no longer seen as being legitimate or behaving legitimately (Nasi et al., 1997; Nelson, 1990; Sethi and Falbe, 1987). Bridges and Nelson (2000:102) suggest that an obvious response to legitimacy gap theory “would be building a reputation for accuracy and legitimate behaviour with target publics”. Weaver, Motion and Roper (2006:16) assert that for the PR practitioners who support a two-way symmetrical model of communication, “this poses the challenge of how to align the organizations’ perspective with social norms and the public interest”.

 Jensen (1997) proposes a noteworthy linkage between organization’s strategic concept and public sphere with regard to organizational legitimacy. She asserts that organizational legitimacy is strongly related to the organization’s strategic concept concerning what it is. If the organization’s publics acknowledge its strategic concept within the exact parameters of its operations, then the organization has legitimacy within the public sphere. Edwards (2001:178) argues that it is here that PR is very relevant, as it plays an important role in “engaging organizations in this part of the public sphere in order to both promote and justify particular organizational identities and ‘ways of being’ ”. As organizational legitimacy and identity are developing, social expectations of organizational behaviour will affect which discourses are appropriate, while discourses concerning responsible organizations “reduce the discourses present in the political public sphere, which argue for regulation of company activities through purely legislative means” (ibid., p.178). Edwards (2001:178) observes that this is most evident in the area of corporate social responsibility, which is a field that PR can play a key role in (Tench, 2006a, 2006b).

 Another important viewpoint in supporting the statement that “the purpose of public relations is to acquire and maintain organizational legitimacy” (W?raas, 2009:318) is the “ecological perspective” of PR (Everett, 2001:311).  The foundations for the ecological perspective on PR, as the latter has been outlined in the introduction of this essay, were first expressed by Cutlip and Center in 1952 as the adjustment and adaptation model of PR (Cutlip, 1991). PR theory shares the organizing framework derived from institutional theory (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005), and is part of an organization’s adaptive system (Cutlip, Center and Broom, 2000).[1] In his proposed ecological models of PR, Everett (2001) highlighted the functional importance of PR and monitoring, claiming that PR is helping organisations to “adjust and adapt to changes in their environments” (Cutlip, Center and Broom, 1994:199).

 In addition, Everett (1990, 1993) argues that the aforementioned perception and its “analogs”, such as the symmetric model of PR detailed by Grunig and Hunt (1984) are “ecological perspectives because they locate the primary context of PR practice in the relationship between an organization and its social environment” (Everett, 2001:311). Within this framework, the concept of ecology organises the belief that “public relations deals with the inderdependence of organizations and others in their environments” (Cutlip, Center and Broom, 1994:199). Therefore, the ecological perspective “arguably constitutes ‘normal science’ ” in PR (Everett, 2001:311). Grunig and Grunig (1992:307) kept this perception in their minds when argued that the “two-way symmetrical model will be a characteristic of excellent public relations programs”.

 Moreover, as it has been already discussed above, an organization is connected to its environment through the public; a viewpoint that is more than welcomed in PR theory (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005). Consequently, Cutlip, Center and Broom (2000) maintain that several organizations will keenly monitor their social environment and make adjustments rooted in what is learned. This practice reflects the open system approach to PR (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005). Keeping to the view of open systems models in systems theory, the notion of adaptation, which drives ecological models in PR, is anchored in the belief that the relationship between the organization and its social environment is one of mutual dependency (Cutlip, Center and Broom, 1994:206; Everett, 2001:313). Metzler (2001) indicates that monitoring and adaptation comes about cyclically to maintain equilibrium between the organizational-environment relationship.[2] Consequently, adaptation is “predicated on the capacity for reciprocal change between the organization and its social environment” (Everett, 2001:313). Grunig and Grunig (1992:289), for instance, observe that in symmetrical models the focal point for PR is on adjusting the relationship between the organization and its publics.

 Cutlip, Center and Broom (1994:209) claim that PR “management is charged with keeping organizational relationships in tune with the mutual interests and goals of organizations and their publics”. Moreover, it is presumed that change must be continuous to attain and uphold “states of equilibrium and balance” between the organization and the environment (ibid., p.213). Therefore, within the ecological perspective on PR, the idea of adaptation lays down the most important mission for PR management as the effort to maximize the degree of adaptation among the organization and its social environment. Cutlip, Center and Broom (1994:199) assert that “public relations’ essential role is to help organizations adjust and adapt to changes in their environments”. This indicates that “no PR effort can succeed in any ideal sense unless the practitioner understands and can influence the process of organizational change” (Everett, 2001:314).

 Another line of reasoning in favour of PR as a sentinel of organizational legitimacy is the noticeable connection W?raas makes to classic PR thinking and practice by concentrating on the perceptions of legitimacy and legitimation. One of the arguments that links Weberian legitimacy to PR is the one mentioned in the title, that is, the practice of PR “has a task of acquiring external support to justify an organisation’s existence in a society, that is to say, to acquire and maintain organizational legitimacy” (Golob and Podnar, 2009:473). The role of PR personnel, W?raas (2009:318) states, is “to develop and communicate a successful strategy (or ‘myth’) that ensures the organization’s support”.[3] Posner-Landsch (2006) argues that PR scholars and practitioners consider it vital to have a story to tell and to create myths. W?raas focuses on the concept of charismatic legitimation to support his argument.[4] He states that PR’s role in creating brands like Apple and Harley Davidson, which they have not merely simple customers but also true fans or believers, is significant. However, some PR practitioners have depended on using myths extensively that they have been labeled “spin doctors” (W?raas, 2007:284).

 Nonetheless, as W?raas observes (2009:311), “it is difficult to find support in [Weber’s] works for the idea that legitimation could or should involve spin”. In addition, he asserts that both the creation of myths and cultivation of beliefs should be seen outside the spectrum of the manipulation of public opinion in the negative sense as it is described by Ewen (1996) (W?raas, 2009:318). They should be accepted as “a way of justifying an organization’s existence through a principle of legitimation. Unethical PR (spin), or legitimation efforts that fail to adhere to such principles, will not lead to legitimacy (ibid.). Above and beyond, he reminds us that “PR practitioners have a responsibility for communicating the reason for an organization’s existence and for protecting its legitimacy” (ibid.).

 Another line of reasoning in defending this essays’ proposition is the stakeholder theory and the notion of emotional stakeholder. Luoma-aho (2010) introduces the notion of the emotional stakeholders and argues that they can threat organisational legitimacy. Stakeholder theory has gained ground in PR (Wu, 2007), as “stakeholders make up the fragile ecosystem of any business” (Foley and Kendrick, 2006:62). Luoma-aho (2009) suggests that the emotions stakeholders feel regarding organizations could be placed on a range and the boundaries of this range could be titled faith-holders (positive emotion) and hateholders (negative emotion). She then states that organizational legitimacy can only be preserved when an organization has more faith-holders than hateholders (Luoma-aho, 2010). PR as a discipline should begin to accept the significance of emotions in society today and their function for organizational legitimacy (ibid.).

 PR holds an important position in organizational continued existence and legitimacy continuation via the processes of balancing the diverse stakeholder emotions and issues via emotion management, and through the managing organizational reputation (ibid.). Inevitably, PR practitioners are seen as emotion workers (Hochschild, 1979). Good examples for the status of PR practitioners are having as regards organizational legitimacy is the Metzler’s (2001) examination of several legitimacy disputes, which occurred at the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons facility in Fernald, Ohio and Pratt’s (2001) investigation on the tobacco industry case, which was examined in the light of its more than forty years of debate concerning the positioning and marketing of tobacco and the managing of health risks related with its use.

 What is more, organizational legitimacy and PR offer models for exploring relationships between an organization and its environment (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005). These relationships are built around two important aspects: stakeholders and communication. Given that both stakeholders and communication are essential to both legitimacy and PR, Patel, Xavier and Broom (2005) propose a model of organizational legitimacy (figure 2) that “connects the recognized and shared elements of legitimacy and PR”. The model indicates that “organizational-environmental relationships exist through a series of displays of legitimacy and illustrates that organizational legitimacy is casually linked to organizational adjustment and adaptation as well as environmental influences and responses within open systems”. The link between these three elements is dialogic communication (ibid.).[5] Even though the proposed model is at an embryonic stage, the dialogic communication indicated as the connection between the three basic elements, is promising as the objective of dialogue between an organization and its public is motivated by a continuous necessity to legitimate its actions (Giradelli, 2004).

  Stakeholder perceptions of organizational legitimacy

Organizational adjustment and adaptation

(Structural and procedural change)

Displays of environmental influences and responses

Displays of organisational legitimacy

Displays of organisational adjustment and adaptation

Environmental influences and responses

(Stakeholders behaviour)

   Figure 2: Proposed model of the impact of organisational legitimacy and open systems PR (Patel, Xavier and Broom, 2005)

  Conclusion

This essay clarified from the beginning that the statement articulated by W?raas (2009:318) that “the purpose of public relations is to acquire and maintain organizational legitimacy” can be supported to a great extent by contemporary PR theory and practice. The aforementioned argument was supported by discussing various theories, concepts and models shared by PR theory and practice, such as the legitimacy gap theory, the concept of the public sphere, the excellence theory, the ecological models of PR, the concept of adaptation, the stakeholder theory, the model of the impact of organisational legitimacy and open systems in PR and the Weberian legitimacy to PR. The position of the PR practitioner as a supportive element of the abovementioned statement was also emphasised throughout the discussion, by mentioning various cases for consideration.

 In general, the essay tried to analyse PR as a core function of organizational legitimization and vice versa. Holmstr?m (2005:503) states that “when we understand PR generically as organizational legitimization, then we are able to understand and compare various practice forms in interrelation to various forms of societal regulation and/or stages of societal evolution”. Finally, it is the author’s belief that by “analyzing the theoretical basis for organizational existence as well as focusing on principles of organizational legitimation may enrich both practical and theoretical knowledge of public relations” (W?raas, 2007:285).

 Endnotes

[1] Adaptation is defined as an organizational response to feedback from the environment (See Levinthal, 1994).

[2] The type of feedback will determine the type of change, which is procedural or structural change. Structural changes relate to “what the system is” and procedural changes relate to “what the system does” (Cutlip Cutlip, Center and Broom, 2000:234).

[3] W?raas also argues (as cited in Bentele and Whmeier, 2007:297) that “for Weber, any organization must gain support for a particular myth about itself and cultivate the belief in its own right to exist”.

[4] The growth of charismatic organizational legitimation in our times is rooted in W?raas’ assumption that the rational order has declined. Nevertheless, Bentele and Wehmeier (2007:298) only partly agree with this. They argue that this statement could be true in several parts of society, but in PR this is not the case. The growth of the myth and story-driven charismatic organization that is derived from emotional intelligence is merely the half truth. “The objective”, they assert, “is to convince stockholders to believe in the rationality and efficiency of the organization” (ibid.).

[5] According to Newsom, Turk and Kruckeberg (2004), PR opens a dialogue between an organization and its stakeholders in order to encourage mutual understandings between an organization and society. The dialogic process was also recommended by Weaver, Motion and Roper (2006:16) as a remedy for the legitimacy gap discussed above.

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