Sociology

Pedagogy

Pure mathematics

Co-citation

Mathematics

Social science

Knowledge management

Politics

Institutional theory

Library science

Political science

Organizational studies

Organizational structure

Organizational field

Subject (documents)

Scholarship

Citation

Public relations

Computer science

Field (mathematics)

Legitimacy

Organizational culture

Transformative learning

Discipline

Review of Managerial Science

As a result of growing interest in the relationship between organizational legitimacy and survival, the flow of publications in the field makes it difficult to maintain a birds-eye view of the multiple lines of research. The purpose of this study is to map the intellectual structure of current scholarship on organizational legitimacy. Through the study of bibliometric co-citations, we identify the most active research areas in organizational legitimacy, their sub-disciplinary composition, patterns of interrelationship, the most influential subject matters and transformative discoveries. This paper contributes to the literature on organizational legitimacy by facilitating quick understanding of the intellectual structure of the field and identifying future lines of research.

The intellectual structure of organizational legitimacy research: a co-citation analysis in business journals