Project legitimacy: Towards a theoretical framework

Scholars have greatly improved our understanding of legitimacy and legitimation processes in recent years. Focusing mainly on organizations and institutional fields, mainstream organizational legitimacy theories assume that organizations are permanent. In so doing, projects—viewed as temporary organizations—like those involving natural resources and infrastructure development projects have been overlooked. In this article, our initial argument posits that a significant temporal distinction underpins the contrast in legitimacy between stable and established organizations and projects. We then develop and discuss two spectra that differentiate the legitimacy of a project from the legitimacy of the organization endorsing the project. Building on these spectra, we then theorize four interplay processes between the legitimacy of projects and the legitimacy of organizations: project reinforcement/degradation and organizational reinforcement/degradation. Our findings pave the way for new and unexplored research avenues on the legitimacy of projects.