A Study On The Strategies Of Community Foundation To Obtain Legitimacy

In recent years,as a new form of social organization,community foundations can facilitate the innovation of social governance mechanisms and models,and solve multiple dilemmas in the development of community governance.However,because community foundation is 'imported' from the West,and has a short history in China,it often faces problems of recognition in practice.Due to different levels of legitimacy,different foundations are disparate in terms of the scales of funds raised,participation levels of the local residents,and the performances of project services.Legitimacy is a special resource for the survival and development of an organization,and in this case,the community foundation needs the recognition of several levels of government,the public,and other stakeholders associated with it.Therefore,for community foundations as a new thing,how to adopt effective strategies to obtain organizational legitimacy is the key to their survival and development.Based on the reflection of existing research and practice,drawing upon information collected through structured interviews and participant observation in SY Community Foundation,this paper examines how the community foundation can obtain the organizational legitimacy required for its own development.Following Richard Scott's theory on organizational legitimacy,namely,breaking down organizational legitimacy into three aspects,regulative legitimacy,normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy,and the stakeholder theory,this paper constructs its analytical framework.Based on this framework,it analyzes what strategies the SY Community Foundation has adopted in the face of the three core stakeholders of government,enterprises,and communities(residents and social organizations)to obtain the legitimacy they confer.The study finds that the SY Community Foundation has always been committed to seeking the bureaucratic power from the government,the market power of the enterprise,and the recognition of the social forces of residents and social organizations in the community.However,due to different power relations,each core stakeholder gives the SY Community Foundation different types of legitimacy,and the government body plays a leading role in it.For the government,the SY Community Foundation more tends to be compliant and actively create environmental strategies to obtain regulative,normative and cognitive legitimacy;in the face of enterprises and communities(residents and social organizations),it tends to gain normative and cognitive legitimacy by selecting and creating different environments to gain their recognition and support.In addition,the three types of legality are interacting and mutual influencing.The regulative legitimacy is the premise,the normative legitimacy is the basis,and the cognitive legitimacy is the key.