J.W. Meyer’s scientific contributions

... Rooted in early sociological and management theory (Meyer & Scott, 1983;Parsons, 1960), organizational legitimacy is generally seen as the acceptance of an organization by its environment, and it has become a central concept in the broader literature on organizational theory and institutionalism (e.g., Bitektine, 2011;Deephouse, 1996;Deephouse & Carter, 2005). However, its nature, how it is gained, maintained and/or lost, and its effects have garnered much scholarly debate over the years, and so works that have been very influential for recent theoretical work have sought to bring more conceptual clarity to the concept (Deephouse et al., 2017;Suddaby et al., 2017). ...

Reference:

Perspective: Organizational legitimacy as a core concept for theorizing on business in emerging economies