3. Organizational Legitimacy Research: Contributing Countries and Institutions from 1995 to 2014

Organizational legitimacy has raised great concern in management research; however, no bibliometric studies have been conducted in this field. The aim of this paper is to show the structure formed by the countries and institutions that contribute to research on organizational legitimacy. The development and evolution of organizational legitimacy as a field of study is shown through a bibliometric study in four 5-year periods (from 1995 to 2014). The results provide information on the main countries and institutions that contribute to research in the field of organizational legitimacy, the lines of research that have been developed and who share them, how legitimacy research between countries and institutions is related, which countries and institutions represent real turning points in this field and how the dissemination of organizational legitimacy research between countries and institutions has evolved. In general, this paper shows how since the beginning of research on the concept of legitimacy applied to organizations and the countries that have generated the highest frequency of citations are the USA, Canada, England and Australia, followed later by China, the Netherlands, France and Spain, while the institutions with the most significant frequencies are Univ. of Alberta, Penn State Univ., Harvard Univ., Warwick Univ., York Univ. and Erasmus Univ. This study provides a comprehensive review of the contributors to the discipline of organizational legitimacy, different schools and lines of research, as well as a starting point for future researchers to continue to build a solid theoretical base.