Rationalising externally-driven change: charities and the exploitation of new-practice requirements

Although legitimacy is critical when attempting to introduce new practices in the nonprofit charity sector, little is known about individual processes of legitimation within such organizations, and how legitimacy emerges and interacts with perceived external pressures. This article investigates how charity organizational actors (using rhetorical arguments) linguistically legitimate/delegitimate new practices as a means of facilitating internal and external legitimacy. The study explores, as an example of organizational change in its early stages, newly-introduced accountability and reporting practices emanating from the current Charity Statement of Recommended Practice in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. The findings show that external regulative and cognitive pressures can be assessed and legitimated as something rational and reasonable in cases where organizational actors perceive the change as “exploitable.” Moreover, they provide evidence of how different interpretations can foster implementation and action (or trigger inaction) and affect the introduction of business-like practices in the nonprofit sector.