This thesis rejects the position, dominant in political philosophy since Plato that the authority of states may be explained by means of a moral theory of legitimacy. It denies that it is possible even in principle to determine a principle that can endow a state with the moral entitlement to rule and create for its citizens a moral obligation of obedience which thereby authorises it to coerce them. The thesis argues that a Lockean understanding of the state leads more naturally to the position that the state is properly understood as a necessary evil granted qualified justification to coerce in order to protect people from each other. It locates this ambiguity in the moral psychology of the individuals from which a Lockean state must derive its powers and through whom it acts. It further claims that, Government officials being no different in character than the individuals over whom they rule, further coercion may be justified to raise funds by taxation to set up political institutions such as a separation of powers, and to ensure that citizens may equip themselves with the skills needed to avoid being financially dependent on the state. This justification is nonetheless provisional, and the responsibility to weigh the necessity of public coercion against the evil that it involves falls upon individual voters as much as parliamentarians and prime ministers.

Entrepreneurial legitimacy and strategies employed to generate legitimacy are topical and pertinent to entrepreneurship. This study sought to understand the impact of formative stage strategic legitimisation employment on entrepreneurial success. Through a review of the literature, the study built a strategic legitimacy scale offering that allowed for historical empirical testing. Using non probability sampling, entrepreneurs were surveyed through a face-to-face questionnaire in an attempt to attain closed response data regarding their historical strategic legitimisation activities and growth indicators. The study provided empirical evidence for a positive relationship between formative stage strategic legitimisation employment and venture development. Furthermore the presence of exponential value returns against strategic legitimacy activities was exposed at low and moderate levels of legitimacy engagement. While volatile value returns were shown at high levels strategic legitimacy employment. Furthermore the effectiveness of formative stage strategic legitimacy activities was shown to not be effected by the maturity of the industry in which a venture started. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The widespread practice of discarding dead fish is believed to negatively affect the sustainability of fish stocks. Between 2015-2019 a landing obligation, aiming to gradually eliminate this practice, is introduced in all EU fisheries. The Landing Obligation (LO) forces fishers to land all catch and requires monitoring at sea rather than on land, it is therefore anticipated to be particularly difficult to enforce. Based on this, the perceived legitimacy of the policy among fishers is believed to be of greatest importance to ensure successful implementation.    To create an understanding of fishers’ commitment to uphold the LO, this study examines Swedish demersal West Coast fishers’ perceived legitimacy of the LO through qualitative interviews. In the interviews Swedish fishers expressed a dual commitment towards upholding the LO. On the one hand, the fishers are overall highly committed to avoiding unwanted catch, which is shown by a positive attitude towards the use and development of selective gear. On the other hand, many are sceptical to the practical formation of the LO, which is at times perceived as incoherent with the fishers’ ecological understanding, as well as with individual fishing practices and policy aims. Finally there are indications of a lack of trust from fishers in the knowledge and intentions of fishery managers, which creates a barrier for commitment to any fishery policy.   For the LO to succeed it is important that fishers develop their practices to avoid unwanted catch. Therefore, it is important to facilitate fishers’ commitment to the policy’s aim rather than merely focusing on compliance with the policy rules.

Thesis advisor: Alyssa W. Goldman / Pandemic mutual aid groups are part of a contemporary mutual aid movement which intends to marry the spontaneous suspension of social boundaries of post-disaster collective action with sustained community-building and social justice. This comparative case study examines how two such radical social change organizations navigate the tension between ideology and the need for resources. Specifically, I ask what strategies organizers deployed in pursuit of their dual mandate, under the banner of ‘solidarity not charity.’ Despite virtually identical philosophies, visions, and circumstances, I find that organizers deployed different resource mobilization strategies to access and generate moral, cultural, and human resources. These strategic differences directly influenced organizational outcomes: One group continued to operate more than two years after organizing, while the other was on an indefinite hiatus. The findings depart from what might be predicted by a longstanding focus on material resources in resource mobilization theory, and support the call for more attention to culture and ideology in resource mobilization scholarship. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Legitimacy in natural resource management refers to the degree to which citizens accept and comply with stated goals and policies. Lack of legitimacy can threaten collaborative-based watershed groups that rely on voluntary compliance to achieve their water quality goals. These groups are locally-based, and sprouted up due to the complexities and political barriers that have prevented better control of non-point, or diffuse, pollution off the landscape and into streams and lakes. One of the most cited requirements for legitimacy in natural resource collaborations is inclusive representation. An exploratory study of several watershed groups in Wisconsin and Illinois uncovered a worrisome exclusion of key stakeholders in the watershed along with an absence of certain demographic groups. Key underrepresented stakeholders included farmers, federal government officials, and national environmental groups. The absence of farmer participation is especially troubling considering the large amount of agricultural land contained within two of the basins studied. In addition, the voluntary nature of watershed group collaboration led to a stilted demographic base, with white males of higher income and education dominating the process. Public participation in watershed groups has been cited numerous times in the literature as a key ingredient of legitimacy, yet it seems that the citizens in the watershed rely on elected officials for their representation. Results from this survey uncovered a lack of participation by elected officials, however, and this provided another barrier to inclusive and high-quality representation in watershed organizations. Another common feature of watershed collaborations is consensus decision-making, but these consensus groups often exhibited exclusion of "difficult" stakeholders, as well as self-exclusion of people who lacked patience with the time-consuming nature of the process. Survey results also indicated that some people felt contentious issues were being avoided in an attempt to reach consensus, as was documented in the literature. Accountability was an identified as a threat to legitimacy in both the focus groups and surveys, and there were doubts about follow-through once projects were agreed upon. Umbrella organizations that provided capacity-building and scientific expertise would often switch to other funded projects, and some wondered if outcomes could be maintained. Government was often cited in the surveys and focus groups as an entity that can be used to foster accountability, but the same respondents seemed to detest more government regulation while embracing accountability. Overall, respondents seemed conflicted about the role of government in these collaborations. Lack of trust was found to be very intense in the two Wisconsin watersheds, due mostly to run-ins with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Lack of trust spurred participation in watershed groups, particularly, when property owners lived lakeside. Meetings would become crowed as landowners wary of regulation or restrictions on their property came to protect their turf. While lack of trust may encourage participation, it also reduces overall legitimacy in the three watersheds studied in this paper, and still appears to be a large stumbling block to legitimacy despite many years of effort. Scientific uncertainty regarding sources of pollutants added to distrust between municipalities in the Illinois watershed, and this was exacerbated by a paucity of monitoring stations and baseline data. The watershed groups studied in this paper were three of the most successful and long-standing collaborations in this region -- and benefitted from effective leadership, capacity-building at multiple scales, transparency, and quality representation. But even in these groups many red flags emerged to threaten legitimacy, and hence the long-term sustainability and success of such groups. More research is needed to test some of the ideas uncovered here, but relying on a voluntary-approach to deal with the insidious problem of non-point source pollution may be a recipe for disaster. Alternative management strategies must be developed to combat runoff pollution, and it seems that more regulation and strict benchmarks should be instituted at the local level --- and be nested within larger scales at the state, regional, and federal level. In this type of strategy the local government would provide the "sticks" with land-use controls and pollution fees, and the state could be a source of "carrots" in the way of funding for projects.

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This qualitative case study examined the development of doctoral students' professional identities through the negotiation of boundaries among communities of practice and through the social forces within a community of practice. The five doctoral students who participated in the study had been secondary agriculture teachers and were in their second and third years of a Teaching and Learning concentration of an Agricultural and Extension Education doctoral program at a Land Grant University. The participants had from four to seven years of teaching experience in secondary agriculture programs and were on full graduate assistantship with their academic department at the time of the study. The over arching theme was developed through analysis of interviews which were developed through a priori propositions, document analysis, and participant observations. This theme - Doctoral students must lose some legitimacy in their previous communities of practice to gain legitimacy with the faculty community of practice and access the faculty Discourse. Doctoral students' ability to define themselves as "good" and to have legitimacy reinforce each other and increase access which facilitates their professional identity development in relation to the faculty community of practice - emerged to describe the entire study and suggest influences that hinder or facilitate professional identity formation. / Ph. D.

The use of teams and work groups in organizations has become increasingly more popular in the last decade. Within each of these groups, a leadership role must be filled in order for the team to achieve its task. This study posited that the method by which the leader comes into this role may have a direct impact on the group's performance and its perceptions of the group's interpersonal processes and efficiency, satisfaction with the group, satisfaction with the group output, and support for the leader. In addition, the influence of leader assignment was expected to change based on the level of interdependence required by the task. One hundred forty-eight subjects were assigned to one of four conditions in a 2X2 design (appointed vs. elected leaders X high vs. low interdependence task), and were asked to fill out a questionnaire upon completion of their task. Results found that the higher level of interdependence was significantly related to more favorable ratings of Perceived Group Efficiency ( F =6.89, p <.05) and Satisfaction with Group Output ( F =7.69, p <.05). Possible limitations and future research opportunities are addressed. / Master of Science

Legitimacy is a central concept within organization studies and it is widely accepted that being granted legitimacy is crucial for organizations in today’s society. Legitimacy is known to be based on rationality which during the course of research development has come to include not only technical aspects, but also socially constructed factors affected by stakeholder’s personal values. Moreover, it is known that there are multiple dimensions of legitimacy and that organizations are evaluated based on method of operation, output and goals, and vision. These can be judged differently by stakeholders in the same field, arriving at possibly contradictive legitimacy judgements regarding the same organization. However, we are not familiar with if the context in which an organization operates affects the legitimacy judgement made by its stakeholders. This thesis therefore aimed to study how the context an organization operates in can affect the legitimacy judgement with a comparative case study. The study shows that the operational context in itself can be a factor in the evaluation of the organization. It also indicates that different contexts can cause different and contradictive legitimacy judgements among the stakeholders even though the operational task and output is essentially the same.

In modern times environmental matters have increased in importance and are being discussed more frequently, and especially in relation with company activity. One way of complying with modern standards for companies is to work with environmental management systems, and it has become quite normal for companies to certify their environmental management systems to a recognized environmental certification. Continuing on this, the purpose of our thesis is to gain a deeper understanding regarding and ultimately assess why it is that companies seek environmental certification. Additionally, we have developed a sub-purpose which is designed to help us gain a deeper understanding regarding the main purpose in a practical context. We will look at 5 production companies in Umeå that have implemented an environmental certification, specifically ISO 14001, and try to understand the reasoning behind choosing to become certified. We will also examine the environmental effectiveness of an ISO 14001 certified environmental management system. We have conducted a comparative case study with these 5 companies in Umeå. Our method of collecting primary data was to interview the companies with a qualitative semi-structured interviewing technique. In the empirical part of the thesis we focused on practically testing the theoretical material. Furthermore, we also analyzed secondary data received from the companies' websites and directly from the interviewees in order to assess the effectiveness of an ISO 14001 certified environmental management system in financial and environmental terms. Regarding the theoretical framework, we focus on two theories referred to as the legitimacy theory and the stakeholder theory, and these theories are used to explain organizational behavior. We also have theoretical material explaining the positives and negatives of environmental management systems, and also ISO 14001 certification and the reasons why companies can benefit from such certification. Our findings suggest that the matter of legitimacy, in combination with the stakeholder theory, affected all of the companies in one way or another when choosing to seek environmental certification. In what ways the companies were affected differed even though there were many similarities across the companies regarding their reasoning to become ISO 14001 certified. We also found that, despite collecting a lot of hard data illustrating the companies' environmental performance over recent years, it was difficult to directly link any improvements to ISO 14001. It was, however, stated that ISO 14001 certification for the environmental management systems did improve the overall quality and environmental focus and performance, but it is still difficult to assess this with much accuracy and certainty due to many contributing factors.