Actional Legitimation: No Crisis Necessary |
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Abstract: | This article articulates the fundamental nature of "legitimacy" to public relations research and sets forth actional legitimation as a productive new area for public relations studies. After tracing the development of the idea of "corporate legitimacy," this research distinguishes between institutional and actional legitimacy. Although institutional legitimacy has formed a basis for studies of crisis communication, image, values advocacy, and issue management, actional legitimacy studies allow for the study of more day-to-day public relations activities in which publics have a more immediate impact on corporate policy. The article concludes that actively studying strategies of legitimation for specific corporate policies would produce useful scholarship that builds on extant legitimacy literature. |
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