4. Organizational Legitimacy: Study of Academic Publications in Scientific Journals

The purpose of this research is to develop a study to observe the evolution in the generation of knowledge in the thematic on organizational legitimacy and delimit the areas of knowledge from which scientific production developed so far has been addressed. A bibliometric study of quantitative-descriptive character was carried out of the bibliographic material that addresses the study of organizational legitimacy, considering the scientific article as a unit of analysis. The database object of analysis is developed from an advanced search for terms in the international database Scopus of Elsevier Science. As a result of the search terms, 300 articles were obtained which were collected and processed using Microsoft Office Excel software. The first article was published in 1975, but it is in 2013 and 2014 when a significant growth is observed in the number of publications. The United States and the United Kingdom are identified as the two countries with more affiliations of authors, authorship, and centers, although the most productive authors belong to Spain. This research work provides information to researchers on the current state which the research is in and defines the areas of knowledge from which the study of organizational legitimacy has been approached—information that allows the academic community to assess the degree of maturity of research in this thematic area, as well as those areas of knowledge or approaches which have not been sufficiently addressed by the scientific literature.