La transferencia del conocimiento en las Mypes de panificación

Some studies have examined how new organisations, entrepreneurs, multinational enterprises15 (MNEs)seek legitimacy (Baum and Oliver, 1991; Aldrich and Fiol, 1994; Kostova and Zaheer, 199916; Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). Legitimacy can be considered a resource, which is essential for survival (Dowling and Pfeffer, 1975; Woodward, et al., 2001; O’Donovan, 2002), and is important to have the retention of corporations’ license to operate (Deegan, 2002). Ashforth and Gibbs (1990) suggest legitimation practices and Suchman (1995) further explores three distinct purposes of

15 _{The multinational enterprise is an organisation that operates in more than two countries, while the}

MNE subunit is related to the shared polices, practices and strategies (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999). Thus, the legitimacy of the MNE subunit is the acceptance and by particular host country institutional environment (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999, p.65).

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In particular, the MNEs, such as Nike, Shell, and BP, operate their subsidiaries in developing countries. Kostova and Zaheer (1999, p.68) suggest that MNEs often face two institutional environments: the internal environment of MNEs and the external host country environment. The first one refers to internal legitimacy, which is related to a unit adopting the organisational structures, policies, and practices institutionalized within the MNEs (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999). Internal legitimacy is vital for its survival of a subsidiary because of its dependence on the parent company for continuing access to resources, for example capital, knowledge and technology (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). The second one refers to the acceptance of an MNE subsidiary is affected by the host country environment and attitude toward foreign firm (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999).

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legitimacy: gaining, maintain, and repairing legitimacy. The choice of legitimation tactics or techniques often depends on the aims of any organisational response (O’Donovan, 2002, p. 349).

The first purpose of an organisation is to gain legitimacy. If large organisations move into a new area, they will face the challenge of gaining legitimacy (O’Donovan, 2002, p. 349). This challenge can be seen as a “liability of newness” (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990). In order to gain legitimacy, such organisations tend to take a proactive strategy to alter social values. They have advance knowledge of change, which could possibly threaten the organisations’ legitimacy; therefore, they can control the information and message before the issue becomes more public (O’Donovan, 2002). In other words, organisations wish to restrict the public’s knowledge of the negative information as long as they could (O’Donovan, 2002).

Maintaining legitimacy can be generally considered easier than gaining or repairing legitimacy (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990; O’Donovan, 2002). In maintaining legitimacy, the challenge of organisations is to identify the publics’ needs so that organisations need to observe, change, and protect past accomplishments (Suchman, 1995; O’Donovan, 2002). Thus, organisations can be expected to change and control public’s perceptions (Sethi, 1978; Suchman, 1995; Deegan, 2007). According to O’Donovan (2002, p. 350), maintaining legitimacy has been classified into three different levels: first, if organisations are accepted as good corporate citizens and act responsibly, the public will have certain expectations concerning social and environmental activities; second, if organisations have the less “legitimacy”, the less they need to maintain; third, if organisations promote themselves as socially and environmentally responsible, they will

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move one step ahead to fulfil what public would expect in order to maintain legitimacy. Repairing legitimacy has been related to different levels of crisis management (Elsbach and Sutton, 1992). Several CSD studies have generally examined how organisations adopted repairing legitimacy to respond to unforeseen crisis (Patten, 1992, 2002; Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; Elsbach, 1994; Deegan, et al., 2000). Repairing legitimacy is similar to gaining legitimacy; however, the main difference between the two is that repairing legitimacy appears to be involved in reactive strategies to unforeseen and immediate crises, whereas gaining legitimacy is proactive and not generally related to a crisis (O’Donovan, 2002).

Organisational legitimacy suggests strategic initiatives for organisations seeking legitimacy in controversial industries (Reast, et al., 2012). In particular, companies in the tobacco industry are socially constructed an “illegitimate” (Campbell, et al., 2003). Thus, companies appear to adopt proactive strategies in gaining legitimacy, rather than to take reactive strategies to repair legitimacy to respond to an unforeseen crisis (O’Donovan, 2002). The tobacco industry in general has been facing ongoing threats to its legitimacy: smoking and health issues (Tilling and Tilt, 2010). The two important documents were the 1962 British Royal College of Physicians report and the 1964 Surgeon-Generals Report (USA), which concluded that cigarette smoking is positively linked to lung cancer and other diseases associated with smoking (Gately, 2001 cited in Tilling and Tilt, 2010). Furthermore, Moerman and van der Laan (2005, p. 385) concluded that British American Tobacco (BAT) used social reporting as a “management strategy to forestall the introduction of more onerous regulation and to obfuscate or defect poor social performance.” Their results thus suggest a legitimacy motivation for social disclosure due to a consistent threat to their legitimacy (Moerman

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and van der Laan (2005).

In a similar vein, the gambling industry has also been facing ongoing legitimacy threats: especially those of gambling- and health-related issues. The health issues can be broadly divided into individual and public health levels. From individual health level, gambling problem can raise in psychological problems, including loss of self-esteem, depression and risk of suicide (Quinn, 2001). From public health level, gambling problem can influence social relationships, economic loss, and legal effects (England and Hlbrechi, 1984; Korn and Shaffer, 1999; Li, et al., 2011). In general, “problem gamblers” constitute roughly 2% of the general population (Blaszczynski, et al., 2011; LaPlante, et al., 2011). This small percentage of the population which experiences gambling problem (Li, et al., 2011) may not realise their problem with gambling, and it is hard to control impulsive gambling and may even lead to involvement in socially destructive behaviour (from family violence to crime) (The Productivity Commission, 1999).

The gambling industry can be expected to engage in efforts to identify with symbols of social legitimacy, for example CSD disclosures, CSR initiatives, and Responsible Gambling (RG) programmes (see Chapters 1 and 7) (Reast, et al., 2012). The industry might seek the legitimacy associated with CSR engagement for a number of reasons, for example to ensure the industry’s continuity and creditability (Reast, et al., 2012). Continuity can be achieved due to key stakeholders providing significant resources to industries that appear to be “desirable, proper and appropriate within some socially constructed systems of norms” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574), while creditability might enhance how individuals understand the industry’s trustworthiness (Miller and Michelson, 2012). A number of studies examine organisational tactics or strategies to

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gain or seek legitimacy in a range of such industries as tobacco (Tilling and Tilt, 2010), brewing (Campbell, et al., 2003) and minerals (Deegan and Blomquist, 2006); however, relatively few studies have discussed gaining or seeking legitimacy in the gambling industry.