A TYPOLOGY OF ORGANISATIONAL COMMUNICATIONLEGITIMATION STRATEGIES

Abstract

The purposes of this article is to present a communication-legitimation strategies typology that can be used to understand the various legitimation strategies implemented by organisations within their corporate disclosures and to assess whether organisations legitimise their operations to achieve accountability or to respond to the concern that arises in relation to their operations. The typology was developed by reviewing a range of literature in the areas of social and environmental accounting, management and organisational studies. The goals of reviewing this literature are to identify the trends of past research and for possible conceptual framework innovations. From the review, five communication-legitimation strategies are identified such as self-promotion, actual-change, acknowledgement, denial or ignorance, and deflection that could be used by organisations to legitimise their operations via corporate disclosures.