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Legitimacy has emerged as a pivotal but often confusing construct in management theory. Defined as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions”(Suchman, 1995: 574), legitimacy has been the subject of extensive research in organization studies. It is also an important subject in related disciplines, including political science (Lipset, 1959), philosophy (Habermas, 1975), psychology (Tyler, 2006), and sociology (Johnson, Dowd, & Ridgeway, 2006). Indeed, the popularity of the concept and its widespread application to so many theoretical and empirical contexts has layered the construct with considerable surplus meaning and has allowed it to be used, and misused, in many ways. The objective of this review, thus, is to bring some construct clarity (Suddaby, 2010a) and …