USI (Lugano) / ESSEC Business School (starting September), Switzerland
A well-established literature argues that individuals form validity beliefs regarding the legitimacy of certain practices, norms, organizations, etc. based on validity cues received from the environment. This literature typically does not consider how individuals cope with incoherent validity cues - although exposure to incoherent validity cues is becoming more frequent in contemporary society, marked by increased dissensus between multiple groups. To begin to address this limitation, we focus on individual organizational members and distinguish four types of validity cues to which they can be exposed. We then develop a model of how organizational members, in response to incoherences in between-cue types, may prioritize some cues over others to infer what is or is not valid within their environment. Specifically, we argue that organizational members’ prioritization of validity cues is sequential - from the internal level of the organization to the external level of the broader environment and culminating with cross-level comparison of validity cues - and influenced by two main drivers: the fear of formal and informal sanctions and the need for organizational members to claim membership into a distinct group. We then discuss the model’s implications for the legitimacy literature.
