Research On The Impact Of Organizational Legitimacy Pressure On Corporate Crisis And Coping Strategy

Nowadays,enterprise is not only an economic organization,but also a corporate citizen with social responsibilities.As an organization with economic and civic attributes,enterprises need to be recognized and supported by authoritative institutions and their stakeholders,i.e.to obtain the the organizational legitimacy.With the rapid development of China's economy and the continuous growth of enterprises,the legitimacy of corporate citizens has received wide attention from all sectors of society.However,in recent years,the frequent occurrence of corporate crisis,especially the corporate safety accidents,has not only damaged the legitimacy of the organization but also brought huge losses and negative effects to our country and society.The sources of organizational legitimacy include:government,law,public,industry and other social organizations.For a long time,the research of enterprise management has been influenced by the economic rational views,and thus ignored the impacts of external institutional environment factors in most cases.With the rise of new institutional research,an increasing number of scholars began to pay attention to the institutional and organizational factors in enterprise research.In recent years,the research on organizational legitimacy has developed rapidly,ranging from passively response to social problems to instrumental use of social responsibility,and then to be a good corporate citizen.Legitimacy pressures are important factors which obstruct enterprises from obtaining legitimacy.After crises enterprises will faced with legitimacy pressures from different aspects.Therefore,they will take measures to alleviate the pressures,including enterprise information communication,implementation of Corporation Social Responsibility(CSR)activities and so on.Based on the above analysis,this paper carried out there aspects of studies:corporate information communication decision-making under crisis situation,the impacts of legitimacy pressures on responsibility for corporate crisis,and the promotion of organizational legitimacy based on CSR implementation.Firstly,from the perspective of corporate crises communication,we studied the impacts of different legitimacy pressures on corporate communication strategy.By analyzing 160 safety accident announcements of listed companies between 2007-2017,we identified the influences of legitimacy pressures on corporate information release after crises.As for the timeliness of crisis announcement,the greater the industrial pressure and media pressure,the more slowly the crisis announcements were published.Enterprise ownership pressure showed a reversed U-shaped relationship with the announcement time,that is,with the moderate proportion of state-owned shares in the enterprise ownership,corporate crisis announcement was released most timely.For the content of announcements,media attention pressure was significantly positively correlated with the descriptive and substantive parts of the announcement.With more industrial pressure,that is to say,crises happened in high risk industries,more descriptive parts of the announcement can be.For the corporate crisis attribution,the greater the industrial pressure,the more internal attribution was made,while the greater the enterprise ownership pressure,the more external attribution was made.Secondly,we analyzed the impacts of organizational legitimacy on responsibility for corporate crisis.Based on 150 national security accident investigation reports from 2003 to 2014,we studied the influences of different legitimacy pressures on the punishment of corporate crises.The results showed that the judicial environmental pressure has positive and significant effects on the number of administrative penalty,the number of judicial punishment and the timeliness of punishment.The greater the judicial environmental pressure,the stricter and faster the punishment for the corporate crisis.Media attention pressure can increase the number of judicial penalties and the timeliness of punishment.Industrial regulatory pressure increases the number of judicial and administrative penalty after crises happened in the coal mining industry.The number of judicial penalty is reduced after the crises of state-owned enterprises.To sum up,different dimensions of legitimacy pressures have different impacts on the punishment of corporate crises.After crises,companies should take corresponding measures to reduce the legitimacy punishment and improve their organizational legitimacy.Finally,we analyzed the promotion of organizational legitimacy based on CSR activities.After collecting 122 title sponsored marathon in China in 2016,we studied the impacts of corporate involvement and CSR strategy on corporate media reputation after CSR sponsorship.Previous studies pointed out that companies can improve their media reputation by implementing CSR activities,and then enhance their organizational legitimacy.Results showed that the participation of CEO,corporate press release,the previous CSR performance and two kinds of CSR fittness(technical CSR fit and institutional CSR fit)are significantly positively correlated with the media reputation.In addition,there is a positive interaction effect between technical CSR fit and CEO participation such that the positive effects of CEO participation is stronger when the technical CSR fit is high.The innovations of our study are summarized:First,this paper combines institutional perspective and strategic perspective organizational legitimacy together,and integrate them into a comprehensive research framework.Based on the institutional perspective,we analyse the impacts of different legitimacy pressures on corporate crisis.Then,from the perspective of strategic legitimacy,we analyze the improvement of organizational legitimacy based on CSR activities.The researches jointly reveal the institutional and strategic attributes of organizational legitimacy.Second,from the perspective of organizational legitimacy pressure,the article analyzed the impacts of different dimensions of legitimacy pressure on corporate crisis(including information communication in crisis response phase and responsibility investigation in crisis disposition phase),which enriched the crisis and organizational legitimacy related research.Third,by adopting the combination of theoretical and empirical research method,research samples are selected from the actual enterprise crises,truly reflect the legitimacy crisis to the enterprise organization and the impact of information communication,make up for the past by setting the virtual-reality research organization the lack of legitimacy and the behavioral responses.Fourth,some new theoretical models have been developed and explored.Based on the theory of organizational legitimacy and Situational Crisis Communication Theory(SCCT),this paper put forward a model of corporate crisis information communication strategy under the pressure of legitimacy.Then,based on the deterrence theory and social learning theory,this paper came up with the theoretical framework of crisis responsibility investigation and its social learning effect.Combined the theory of information communication and strategic matching,this paper proposed the strategy selection model of CSR activities.The empirical results of this paper provide a new idea for the further research of corporate crisis management and organizational legitimacy.The practical implication mainly includes:Corporate crisis communication research helps guide enterprises to conduct proper information communication,thus reducing the negative impact of crisis on enterprises.Legal responsibility for corporate crisis research helps to guide the government and relevant departments of enterprise security crisis survey,supervision and punishment,to ensure that the punishment of efficient,fair and transparent;Enterprises can learn from it and strengthen safety management,thus improving the security of the whole society and promoting harmonious development.The research of enterprise legitimacy promotion strategy can help guide enterprises to conduct CSR activities better and help enterprises to manage and improve their organizational legitimacy.