Legitimacy, autonomy and trust: a recipe for organizations to operate in the public interest

Purpose This study aims to examine the effect of publics' legitimacy evaluations on Arthur W. Page's conceptualization of “reasonable freedom of action” by breaking it into two parts: (1) perceived organizational autonomy and (2) trust in the organization. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted an online experiment using a 2 (legitimacy: low, high) × 2 (legitimacy type: institutional, actional) between-subjects design. Measured...