Stakeholder and legitimacy frameworks as applied to Behavioural Accounting Research

This chapter provides an introduction to stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory. In light of stakeholder theory, organizations must be accountable not only to investors but also towards a multiplicity of stakeholder, whose expectations and interests can affect or be affected by the organizations’ actions. Section 2 provides an overview of the descriptive, normative and instrumental approaches to stakeholder theory, along with a classification of stakeholders and a comparison with agency theory. The focal point of legitimacy theory is that the alignment between organizations’ behavior and social expectations represents a strategic resource: organizations search for legitimacy in order to maintain their social contract with the communities they are operating in. Section 3 defines the concepts of legitimacy and social contract, outlines the main literature on legitimacy theory and presents a comparison with stakeholder theory. The final sections discuss both stakeholder and legitimacy theory in the context of behavioral accounting research and provide a set of suggestions for further research.