Multiple pathways to organizational legitimacy: Information visibility, organizational listening, and cross-sector partnerships

Given the critical role of legitimacy in attracting key resources for organizational survival and growth, organizational and strategic communication research has long sought to understand the mechanisms essential in improving organizational legitimacy. Guided by stakeholder research and configurational thinking, we examine three interconnected communication mechanisms for relationship management in organizational legitimation: (a) information visibility, (b) organizational listening, and (c) cross-sector partnerships. Based on survey and archival data from 44 U.S. nonprofit organizations, we employed a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify the pathways to high or low organizational legitimacy. Our results reveal the combinations of these factors can complement or substitute for one another to explain legitimacy. Specifically, high pragmatic legitimacy requires effective listening to stakeholders and collaborating with government agencies. By contrast, in low pragmatic legitimacy, organizations are often hindered by limited capacity for information visibility, ineffective listening to stakeholders, and no collaboration with corporate partners. These results suggest theoretical contributions to stakeholder research in public relations and organizational and strategic communication scholarship, as well as practical implications for improving organizational legitimacy for mission-driven organizations.