Ethical change, legal normativity and social legitimacy

This article examines organizational change in enterprises as a socio-legal process rather than a purely technical or managerial transformation. Drawing on the sociology of law and business ethics, it explores how legal norms, ethical expectations and institutional pressures shape the legitimacy of organizational change. The analysis adopts an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, engaging with the work of Luhmann, Bourdieu, Cotterrell, Habermas and institutional theory. Enterprises are conceptualized as social actors embedded in broader legal, cultural and normative environments, where ethical discourse functions both as a mechanism of control and a source of legitimacy. The article argues that organizational change involves processes of moral and legal legitimation through which enterprises negotiate social acceptance and institutional continuity. By framing organizational transformation as a socio-legal phenomenon, it contributes to law and society scholarship by demonstrating how legal structures and ethical norms jointly shape the conditions under which organizational change becomes legitimate, socially intelligible and sustainable.