Legitimacy Deficits and Legitimation
By legitimacy, we refer to 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” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Theories of crisis management
(Boin, 2009; Quarantelli, 1988), and disaster recovery (D. P. Aldrich,
2012b; Tierney, 2007) have noted the importance of emergent groups,
consisting of individual citizens collaborating in response to a crisis
in and between organizations or systems, but whose collective actions
are not yet institutionalized (Stallings & Quarantelli, 1985). As local
entrepreneurs acting collectively to fill voids (Drabek & McEntire,
2003), these groups are embedded in their communities and often have
fluid organizational designs lacking clear boundaries (Williams &
Shepherd, 2021). However, because they are relative newcomers to the
institutional field and relatively unknown to dominant actors, their
legitimacy is often questioned. They may lack both cognitive and
socio-political legitimacy (H. E. Aldrich & Fiol, 1994).
Even though many maker spaces have operated in their communities for
years, their involvement in widescale community-level action represented
a first for many of them. They entered the fray without clear precedents
as recognized contributors to community welfare. We thus anticipated
that they would suffer from a variety of legitimacy deficits: lack of
trust and support from other key players in the community, lack of
access to the resources they need, and suspicions regarding the quality
and reliability of their contributions. In our research, we explored the
conditions surrounding perceptions of makers’ legitimacy and the
legitimation processes they developed to overcome local institutions’
skepticism (Suddaby et al., 2016).