Legitimacy Tests: Theorizing legitimacy as justification work

Legitimacy tests occur when an event – such as an organizational accident, revelations about unethical business practices, or the detection of potentially harmful products – calls into question the conformity of an organization’s modus operandi with the expectations of its evaluating audiences. In this paper, we draw on the concept of justification work to improve our understanding of how legitimacy tests arise, evolve and are eventually settled. Specifically, we theorize how legitimized higher-order principles (orders of worth) are mobilized through discursive and material account giving during legitimacy tests. Our framework emphasizes the process of complexifying accounts as legitimacy tests evolve, which can serve to decrease the initial polarization between challengers and focal organizations. Furthermore, we theorize the conditions that affect whether or not a legitimacy test becomes settled, such as social actors’ competence in mobilizing appropriate orders of worth and aligning situational evidence with established societal categories of value.