DOI: 10.4324/9781003349860-7
5 Legitimacy and stigma in
organisations and entrepreneurship
A literature review
5.1 Legitimacy: Early roots and definition
Entrepreneurial ventures, similar to other organisational actors, live and thrive
whilst conforming to broad social norms and regulations (Weber, 1978). The
exercise of complying with a set of formal and informal institutions (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983) may allow entrepreneurial ventures to gain acceptance in the eyes
of general audiences (Brown & Jones, 2000; Johnson et al., 2006) and thereby
become legitimate actors in the organisational environment (Suchman, 1995).
The concept of legitimacy has entered the organisational discourse in recent
decades, mainly following sociological roots (W