Organizational Legitimacy: A Bibliometric Analysis of Web of Science Database

Abstract

This study is an attempt to conduct a bibliometric review in the above-mentioned field. A bibliometric review is conducted using 644 articles from the Web of Science core collection database. The article evaluates the research article distribution based on time and geography. It also highlights notable articles, authors and journals. We make use of techniques like citation analysis, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis. Software Vos Viewer and Biblioshiny are used. The article also explores the theme development in the area. The volume of publications has seen steady growth since 2003 but has seen rapid growth post 2020. On analysing the country-wide distribution, we realize that the top five positions are occupied by USA, England, China, Canada and Spain. In terms of the major sources of these publications, the list of journals has spread across various disciplines such as accounting, human resource management, economics, ethics, etc. Trending topics like corporate social responsibility, sustainability, financial performance, corruption, risk and trust whose linkages with legitimacy have gained emphasis in recent times have been highlighted. Further, the analysis emphasizes areas with research scope like social media and legitimacy, corporate governance and legitimacy, institutional pressures, etc. Additionally, co-citation clusters were developed to represent the distribution of the thematic structure. The article provides various suggestions for academicians and managers/policymakers.