TY - JOUR
T1 - Legitimating the legitimate
T2 - A grounded theory study of legitimacy work among Ethics and Compliance Officers
AU - Trevino, Linda K.
AU - den Nieuwenboer, Niki A.
AU - Kreiner, Glen
AU - Bishop, Derron G.
PY - 2014/3/1
Y1 - 2014/3/1
N2 - Organizations have responded to ethical scandals in part by creating the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) role to help insure employee ethical and legal behavior. Because ECO work is so fundamental to behavioral ethics in organizations and we know very little about it, we conducted a grounded theory study to learn more. We learned that, although most ECOs were hired to help their organizations respond to external legitimacy challenges, ECOs face major legitimacy challenges inside their organizations. Facilitating conditions may reduce these challenges and help ECOs reach internal legitimacy. But, we also found that ECOs engage in what we term legitimacy work that relies on a number of tactics to help them gain legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents. We tie our findings to the broader legitimacy literature and draw implications for the behavioral ethics literature.
AB - Organizations have responded to ethical scandals in part by creating the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) role to help insure employee ethical and legal behavior. Because ECO work is so fundamental to behavioral ethics in organizations and we know very little about it, we conducted a grounded theory study to learn more. We learned that, although most ECOs were hired to help their organizations respond to external legitimacy challenges, ECOs face major legitimacy challenges inside their organizations. Facilitating conditions may reduce these challenges and help ECOs reach internal legitimacy. But, we also found that ECOs engage in what we term legitimacy work that relies on a number of tactics to help them gain legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents. We tie our findings to the broader legitimacy literature and draw implications for the behavioral ethics literature.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.009
DO - 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84892682600
VL - 123
SP - 186
EP - 205
JO - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
JF - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
SN - 0749-5978
IS - 2
ER -