Coherence and persistence: A new perspective on legitimacy

We analyze the history of the insurance industry’s categorization of the computer to challenge implicit assumptions about legitimacy. We show that a new category can be legitimated without a full understanding of the category’s boundaries and legitimation does not entail taken for grantedness or implicit rule following. Based on these insights, we develop an alternative conceptualization of legitimacy. Legitimacy is not about defining new rules and then implicitly following them, but is expressed in terms of a category cohering with the existing categorical system and persisting when applied to evaluate new cases. We explore the implications of this view for organizational theory and argue for increased attention to these epistemic issues embedded in market activity.