Abstract
Current explanations of the business consequences of achieving sustainability goals are incomplete. This paper provides empirical evidence of the effect of environmental and social sustainability on organizational legitimacy. Using structural equation modelling, in a sample of 77 Spanish state and private universities, the results show that achieving environmental and social sustainability goals positively influences organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, there is a positive relationship between environmental sustainability and social sustainability. In the field of legitimacy, this research expands our knowledge on the antecedents of organizational legitimacy. In the field of sustainability, it sheds light on the effects of environmental and social sustainability on organizations. At the same time, we provide empirical support to the link between environmental and social sustainability. For practising professionals, the results justify the relevance of actions supporting environmental and social sustainability.
Institutional theory helps us understand why some organizations survive and others do not. According to this theory, organizations that carry out actions that are perceived as socially desirable, proper and appropriate acquire legitimacy and have greater chances of survival (Deephouse et al., 2017). Legitimacy is a key resource for organizational survival (Suddaby et al., 2017). In consequence, organizations implement actions to obtain it (Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Díez-de-Castro, 2021). Among these, meeting sustainability goals has become a part of corporations’ plans to obtain legitimacy (Czinkota et al., 2014).
Previous authors have presented a link between sustainability and organizational legitimacy (Cachón-Rodríguez et al., 2021; Miotto, Del-Castillo-Feito, & Blanco-González, 2020; Wehrmeyer & Tyteca, 1998). Both variables are linked to image, reputation, as well as product and service quality (Czinkota et al., 2014; Del-Castillo-Feito et al., 2020). Michelon et al. (2019) note that sustainability is a stepping stone to obtaining legitimacy. Conversely, organizations that perform poorly in sustainability tend to hide their results in order to protect their legitimacy (Hummel & Schlick, 2016).
Organizations have to be sustainable and must protect their environment if they want to gain legitimacy (Welbeck et al., 2017). Bansal and Roth (2000) confirm that companies increase their legitimacy when they are green. In some cases, the sustainable activities that organizations perform are not even part of their main activity, yet they are still carried out (Jaber & Oftedal, 2019). This happens because stakeholders are increasingly aware of sustainability issues and require that companies address them (Varadarajan, 2017). When organizations perform actions that are seen as desirable by their stakeholders, they obtain legitimacy (Deephouse et al., 2017). Researchers have shown that executing social responsibility actions can be a way to obtain legitimacy (Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021; Ozdora-Aksak & Atakan-Duman, 2016). For example, setting a corporate carbon policy is positively linked to legitimacy (Galán-Valdivieso et al., 2019). Additional research also links organizational commitments to sustainability with legitimacy increases, thanks to increased support from local communities (Marano et al., 2017) and internal stakeholders (Zheng et al., 2015). However, institutional dynamics are different with regard to sustainability or legitimacy (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009). In other words, the motivations behind sustainability and legitimacy are different. This makes it hard to make assumptions about the relationship between them.
Current literature does not sufficiently explain the organizational consequences of achieving sustainability goals. Specifically, we do not know the effects of environmental, social and economic goals on legitimacy (O’Dwyer et al., 2011). If sustainability does not influence legitimacy, sustainability actions become a formal obligation for organizations. They will perform them superficially, without embedding them in their activities. In this research, we explore the effect of achieving different sustainability goals on organizational legitimacy (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021).
In university settings, there is an intense concern about sustainability (Miotto et al., 2018). For universities, sustainability is a priority agenda topic due to pressure from the community (Snelson-Powell et al., 2016), strong interest from researchers to increase knowledge in this field and to demonstrate the effects of sustainability actions (Frandsen et al., 2013). Universities belong to a highly institutionalized sector that adheres to a standard set of policies, regulations, guarantees and higher education laws (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020). These laws help strengthen the sector and ensure similar-quality standards and student support levels.
To test the relationship between sustainability and legitimacy, we examine the structural relationship between environmental sustainability, social sustainability and organizational legitimacy in a sample of 77 Spanish state and private universities. In the field of legitimacy, our results broaden the knowledge on the antecedents of organizational legitimacy. In the field of sustainability, we shed light on the effects of environmental and social sustainability. In the field of higher education, managers will find these results useful to understand the impact of environmental and social sustainability actions on organizational legitimacy. It also allows for managing a more efficient allocation of resources.
Theoretical background
Sustainability has become an agenda item for politicians, institutions and businesses. There is a globally shared consciousness on the consequences of business activity for sustainability as well as on the future. In this context, companies have integrated these priorities into their strategic decision-making process (Thomas & Lamm, 2012; Wilmshurst & Frost, 2000). Companies carry out sustainable actions for many reasons (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009). Organizations will develop sustainability initiatives to: meet regulations (Wright & Rwabizambuga, 2006); seek rewards (i.e., personal satisfaction, labour equity and healthcare, political engagement, reduced production costs, markets for new products or services, or enhanced brand equity) (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009); or manifest their commitment to ethical behaviour (Blanco-González et al., 2020), including caring about the future of society or sharing resources with society (Bansal & Roth, 2000; Campbell, 2007).
For institutional theory researchers, all of these motivations are antecedents that lead to the institutionalization of organizations (Cruz-Suárez et al., 2014; Judge et al., 2008). Institutionalization is the process by which organizations become legitimized (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). ‘Organizational legitimacy is the perceived appropriateness of an organization to a social system in terms of rules, values, norms, and definitions’ (Deephouse et al., 2017). Legitimacy helps organizations thanks to its ability to influence people’s behaviours (Lamin & Zaheer, 2012). Individuals and governments are more likely to support legitimized corporations (Díez-de-Castro et al., 2019), to buy their products (Cachón-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Chaney et al., 2016; Rao et al., 2008) and to facilitate their access to the resources they need to survive (Pollack et al., 2012; Stuart et al., 1999).
One of the most common ways for corporations to obtain legitimacy is by performing social responsibility activities (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020; Scherer & Palazzo, 2007). It is expected that organizations engage with sustainability actions to gain legitimacy from their stakeholders (Frandsen et al., 2013). This occurs in both large as well as small companies (Bai et al., 2019; Ozdora-Aksak & Atakan-Duman, 2016). Researchers have proven that organizations that face institutional pressures can gain legitimacy by showing good sustainability performance (Ashrafi et al., 2020). Sustainability helps strengthen legitimacy (Press et al., 2020). An organization is perceived as legitimate when the person evaluating its legitimacy assesses that its moral and ethical values are coherent with their own (Tost, 2011). This interpretation plays to value systems that consider sustainability as morally legitimate in their own right, since it contributes to environmental and social well-being (Hengst et al., 2020).
However, the sustainability actions that an organization carries out do not always impact its legitimacy (Miotto et al., 2018). This can happen when sustainability actions are insufficiently publicized among stakeholders or when the sustainability actions are irrelevant for stakeholders (Del-Castillo-Feito et al., 2022). Communicating sustainability actions is essential in order to obtain organizational legitimacy (Bachmann & Ingenhoff, 2016; Cho & Patten, 2007). Organizations can use communication tools to broadcast their actions and gain legitimacy (Prado-Roman et al., 2020). A commonly used tactic to gain legitimacy is to publish environmental reports (Aerts & Cormier, 2009; Cüre et al., 2020; Michelon et al., 2019).
It is not always possible to determine a clear relationship between sustainability and organizational legitimacy because different stakeholders evaluate sustainability in different ways (O’Dwyer et al., 2011). When stakeholders consider sustainability actions to be irrelevant, legitimacy will remain unchanged. A judgement of irrelevancy can happen when stakeholders believe that the sustainability actions that are being performed do not address the most important issues or when the performance level of these actions is so low that they do not deserve further consideration (Riaz et al., 2019). In consequence, the influence of sustainability on legitimacy still needs to be tested. The theory seems to indicate that there is a relationship between the two variables, but it is not clear what sustainability actions have a greater influence on organizational legitimacy (Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021). The following subsections justify the research model and the three hypotheses. Figure 1 shows the relationship between environmental sustainability, social sustainability and organizational legitimacy. The formulation of the hypotheses is included at the end of each subsection.
Relationship between environmental sustainability, social sustainability and organizational legitimacy.
Environmental sustainability and organizational legitimacy
Initially, interest in sustainability was mainly focused on the environment. Powerful social interests have led governments to regulate a good number of matters related to environmental sustainability (e.g., Segrestin et al., 2020). Even further, social pressure has incited companies and institutions to work on preserving natural resources. Businesses will often work on environmental sustainability initiatives that go beyond regulatory compliance (Palazzo & Scherer, 2006). Research shows that people include environmental considerations when evaluating organizational legitimacy (Finch et al., 2015). Consumers’ altruistic attributions confer greater legitimacy on organizations that carry out environmentally sustainable actions (Miotto & Youn, 2020). Similarly, employees confer greater legitimacy to organizations that carry out environmentally sustainable actions (Blanco-González et al., 2020).
In the higher education sector, legitimacy has been related to research productivity and performance (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020), corporate citizenship (Blanco-González et al., 2020), responsibility in management education (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2014), institutional theory (Snelson-Powell et al., 2016), responsibility of the future leaders (Miotto, Del-Castillo-Feito, & Blanco-González, 2020) and sustainability (Del-Castillo-Feito et al., 2020). In this line, authors have determined that an organizational change is necessary in universities, so that they are truly sustainable and become green universities (Kemp & Scoffham, 2022). Based on the previously discussed statements and the application of the study to the higher education sector, we present the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Achieving environmental sustainability goals positively influences the organizational legitimacy of universities.
Social sustainability and organizational legitimacy
Beyond environmental sustainability, stakeholders expect companies to foster justice and equity: specifically, cultural rights, truthful information and gender and racial equity. Individual and institutional investors have started to include corporate citizenship as a factor in their investment decisions. Organizations are starting to favour providers that promote social sustainability (Davis-Sramek et al., 2020). Work-seekers also gravitate towards companies that demonstrate a solid social portfolio. This interest in social issues is being used by companies to gain legitimacy. For example, recruiting women and minorities can augment organizational legitimacy (Ely & Thomas, 2001). The stock market also reacts positively in the short term when women are named to a company’s board of directors (Campbell & Vera, 2010).
Universities’ management needs to adapt to competitiveness, quality assurance, effective budget allocation, fundraising and employee management (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020). Universities have to identify a competitive advantage to stand out in the marketplace (Ajina et al., 2020) and to positively impact the common good (Akrivou & Bradbury-Huang, 2015). Universities have the responsibility of collaborating in the design of a new world where the economic, social and environmental interests of all members of society are legitimized and preserved (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020). Universities are responsible for training the leaders of this social change (Chen et al., 2016). Universities are responsible for training future leaders in social values and sustainability (Dzimińska et al., 2018), and in this line, social sustainability is a priority (Miotto, Del-Castillo-Feito, & Blanco-González, 2020). Based on this, we present the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Achieving social sustainability goals positively influences the organizational legitimacy of universities.
Environmental and social sustainability performance
Studies on environmental sustainability are the ones that have achieved the most significant results and have caused the greatest concern in society. On numerous occasions, these investigations have been carried out in the university sector (e.g., Albareda Tiana et al., 2017; Castañeda & Quintero, 2015; Gerbens-Leenes et al., 2003; Kassinis et al., 2016; Magee et al., 2013; Mai et al., 2018; Salvioni et al., 2017; Scipioni et al., 2008; Trischler et al., 2020).
Although the influence of environmental sustainability on organizational legitimacy is firmly established in important scientific articles, including the university sector (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020; Saraite-Sariene et al., 2019; Snelson-Powell et al., 2016), the relationship between environmental and social sustainability has not been considered to the same extent and it has not been clearly determined whether environmental sustainability influences social sustainability. In other words, whether social sustainability has become a mediating variable for achieving organizational legitimacy. Social sustainability appears in researchers’ concerns slightly later than environmental sustainability and, initially, less strongly, as shown by the number of studies on this subject.
There is an increasingly obvious need to maintain the balance between the natural and human environments (Babcicky, 2013). The concern for social sustainability followed the one for environmental sustainability. This arises from a belief that the destruction of the environment is as unacceptable as the destruction of human dignity or fundamental human rights. This begs the question of a relationship between environmental and social sustainability that is not only temporal but also causal (Toussaint et al., 2021). It is hard to imagine an organization that acts irresponsibly towards the environment and yet carries out social sustainability actions (Castelló & Lozano, 2011). It also seems evident that the longer an organization has concerned itself with the environment, the greater its concern for social sustainability. If this is true, there would be a causal relationship between environmental and social sustainability. Empirical studies on sustainability have barely addressed this issue (Hu et al., 2020). In fact, some studies point to beneficial effects of environmental sustainability on social issues such as work climate and job satisfaction (Staniškienė & Stankevičiūtė, 2018). We believe that this is a relevant question since it would make social sustainability a mediator variable, and we present the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Performing environmental sustainability actions positively influences the performance of the social sustainability actions of universities.
Sample and methodology
Sample
We tested the hypotheses on secondary data from 77 Spanish universities. In 2020, the Spanish university sector was made up of 83 universities, of which 50 were state and 33 private. State universities are different from private universities in terms of management styles and profit-maximization objectives. Some scholars argue that the management of both faces similar problems and challenges that require the same strategies to overcome them (Delgado-Alemany et al., 2020). However, state universities face more complicated situations in which the nature of the problems and challenges related to, for example, honesty, integrity, transparency, accountability and corruption are different (Akareem & Hossain, 2016). State and private universities have the same general objectives, which are research, teaching and the creation of value for society. However, the conditions in which they operate in the education sector are not the same and, generally, their target audience is different. Therefore, state and private universities compete in the same sector but not under the same competitive conditions (Delgado-Alemany et al., 2020; Huezo-Ponce et al., 2021).
Variable measurement
Legitimacy
There is no single measure for assessing the legitimacy of an organization. ‘Our analysis reveals three different answers to this question, each of which betrays a unique epistemological and ontological position’ (Suddaby et al., 2017, p. 451), which generates different perspectives in research. There are at least three main perspectives for assessing the legitimacy of organizations: (a) legitimacy as property; (b) legitimacy as process; (c) legitimacy as perception (Suddaby et al., 2017). The perspective adopted in this research is the one most commonly used in research, legitimacy as property. From this perspective, researchers focus their interest on what the organization is like and what characterizes it, and it forces the creation of indicators in relation to what are considered key aspects of the organization. Previous research in the field of business economics has used rankings and accreditations as measures of organizational legitimacy (e.g., Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021; Salvioni et al., 2017).
Thus, we measure organizational legitimacy through university rankings (Miotto et al., 2019). Each ranking represents a legitimacy indicator. The value for each indicator is the university’s overall score in the ranking. We use four recognized international rankings — Shanghai Ranking, QS World University Ranking, Scimago Institutions Ranking, The World University Ranking — and three national rankings of Spanish universities — Ranking El Mundo of universities, Dynamic Transparency Index and U-Ranking developed by Banco BBVA. We use Spanish national rankings because there are Spanish universities which despite not appearing in international rankings are legitimate in Spain. These rankings reflect the results of the teaching and research activities of each university (Miotto, Blanco-González, & Díez-Martín, 2020). Each of the rankings focuses on important and differentiating issues for universities. Thus, a more complete evaluation of universities is achieved.
Scimago Institutions Ranking ranks universities according to research performance, innovation and social impact. The QS World University Ranking analyses six areas: Academic reputation; Employer reputation; Faculty/student ratio; Citations per faculty; International student ratio; International faculty ratio. THE (Times Higher Education) uses 13 performance indicators to cover the three main areas of university activity: research, impact and teaching. The Shanghai Ranking (ARWU) uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals in the fields of nature and science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index in the Web of Science, and per capita performance of a university. The Ranking El Mundo conducts the study of Spanish universities based on questionnaires to teachers and information provided by the universities. U-Ranking is developed by the BBVA Foundation and the Ivie on the basis of 20 indicators that evaluate teaching activity, research and innovation. U-Ranking provides two overall results. On the one hand, the Absolute U-Ranking, which does not consider the size of universities, and on the other hand, the U-Ranking, which classifies universities by correcting the effects of their size.
Environmental sustainability
To measure environmental sustainability, we use three indicators from UI GreenMetric, The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings and sustainability planning activities. The first indicator is obtained from the total results of the ranking of universities in the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking. This ranking measures the environmental sustainability of universities based on six criteria: setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation and education.
The second indicator also represents an overall measure of the environmental sustainability of universities. The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings assess universities in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ranking assesses universities in relation to the 17 SDGs. Six of these goals refer to environmental sustainability: 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 and 15. Thus, the overall ranking of each university is the sum of the scores obtained in these six criteria.
Finally, whether the university has created a sustainability office or unit and/or has specific plans to improve environmental sustainability is measured. The indicator refers to how the university responds to sustainability issues through its policies and management structures. Universities undertake actions that are channelled through the creation of sustainability offices and, also, with the approval of sustainability plans. The information is obtained from the information available on the website of each university. This variable is rated as true/false (1 or 0) and has been used in previous research on the level of institutionalization of sustainability initiatives in university governance (Salvioni et al., 2017).
Social sustainability
Social sustainability does not yet have a unanimous definition (Staniškienė & Stankevičiūtė, 2018). Its meaning depends on stakeholder interest (Salvioni et al., 2017), which is why researchers are still debating a homogeneous description for the concept. For the purposes of this research, we define social sustainability as being committed to institutional transparency and equality. Higher education stakeholders are highly sensitive to transparency (Saraite-Sariene et al., 2019) and equality (Miotto et al., 2019; Voorspoels & Bleijenbergh, 2019). Thus, to measure social sustainability, we use two transparency indicators and one equality indicator.
The first transparency indicator is obtained from the overall result achieved by universities in the Dynamic Transparency Index. This index evaluates Spanish universities by means of 137 indicators grouped into five concepts: Transparency; Public procurement; Procurement of services; Economic-financial transparency; Participation and collaboration with stakeholders and society.
The second transparency indicator (Transparency web and content) analysed the university websites, observing whether they provided information on the following 13 topics: Institutional Information; Economic Information; Government and Social Council; Dependent Entities; Administration and Services Staff; Teaching and Research Staff; Student Body; Academic Offer and Demand; Performance; Regulations; Projects Subject to Public Information; Participation and Communication; Statistics, Reports and Rankings. The scores ranged from zero to five points: 0 = did not include content on these topics on their website; 1 = included information on one to two topics; 2 = included information on three to four topics; 3 = included information on five to six topics; 4 = included information on seven to nine topics; 5 points = information on 10 topics or more.
Finally, an indicator to measure university equality planification was constructed. Equality is a broad term that applies especially to gender equality (Miotto et al., 2019). For this indicator, university websites were analysed for the existence of: updated equality plan; equality plan not updated; equality unit; information, conferences, awards on equality; gender equality in the governing board. Each item was worth one point, except for having an updated equality plan, which was worth two points. The maximum score for this indicator was five points and the minimum, zero points.
Data analysis
To measure the effect of environmental and social sustainability on legitimacy, we use Partial Least Squares (PLS), a variance-based structural equation modelling technique (Reinartz et al., 2009). This method allows us to assess the reliability and validity of the measures of theoretical constructs and to estimate the relationships between these constructs. PLS is an appropriate technique to use in a theory development situation such as in this study because: it is primarily intended for causal-predictive analysis, where the problems explored are complex and prior theoretical knowledge is scarce; and the use of secondary data makes the utilization of PLS advisable (Hair et al., 2017).
Results
Hypotheses testing was developed by using PLS. Estimating a model with PLS requires a two-step systematic assessment (Hair et al., 2017). Thus, the results section is divided into two subsections. The first section analyses the results regarding the assessment of the measurement model. It shows the validity of the model. The second subsection evaluates the relationship between constructs (the structural model) and shows the results of hypothesis testing.
Assessment of the measurement model
Tables 1 and 2 present results for the assessment of the measurement model. In these, we evaluate the internal consistency of the model as well as convergent and discriminant validity. Composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha are used to evaluate internal consistency reliability of the indicators. Following Nunnally and Bernstein’s (1994) guidelines about internal consistency reliability, all of them were reliable. According to the literature, the outer loadings should exceed .7 (Hair et al., 2018). Our results surpass these recommended values, thus suggesting that the model’s internal consistency is reliable.
Reliability and convergent validity.
Note: CA = Cronbach Alpha; CR = Composite reliability; rho_A = a reliability coefficient; AVE = Average variance extracted
p < .01
Discriminant validity (HMTH ratio).
Note: n/a = not applicable
Convergent validity is assessed by examining the average variance extracted (AVE) (Hair et al., 2011). AVE indicates the variance extracted for all item loading on a single construct in relationship with the variance caused by measurement error. All AVE values exceeded .5, which exceeds the rule of thumb provided in the literature for adequate convergence.
The model also passed the assessment for discriminant validity. To evaluate this aspect, we used the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations between two constructs (Henseler et al., 2015). The values produced by this ratio are below .9, which exceeds the recommendations for discriminant validity. In other words, each construct is different from the others and captures a unique phenomenon that is not represented elsewhere in the model.
Results of hypothesis testing
Table 3 presents the results of hypothesis testing. A bootstrapping method (5,000 subsamples) was used to generate standard errors and t-statistics. This allowed us to assess the statistical significance of the path coefficients. All the relationships in the proposed model were significant and above the recommended values (β > .3). Results show that the direct effect of environmental sustainability on legitimacy is significant and positive (H1; β = .435; p < .001). Social sustainability has a significant and positive influence on legitimacy (H2; β = .364; p < .05). Finally, there is a significant and positive direct effect of environmental sustainability on social sustainability (H3; β = .593; p < .001).
Results of hypotheses testing.
Note: *** p < .001
The model`s predictive accuracy was measured by the coefficient of determination (R2 value). The coefficient represents the amount of explained variance of the endogenous constructs in the structural model. The R2 suggests moderate predictive precision of the model (levels between .25 and .75) (Hair et al., 2011). Environmental and social sustainability explain 51.1% of gains in legitimacy. Furthermore, environmental sustainability explains 35.4% of changes in social sustainability.
In addition, the Stone-Geisser test, or Q2, (Geisser, 1975; Stone, 1974) was estimated using the blindfolding procedure. The larger Q2, the more relevant the predictive model. Q2 values of .02, .15 and .35 reveal a small, medium or large predictive relevance of a certain latent variable (Hair et al., 2017). The results of our model evidence moderate predictive relevance of environmental and social sustainability on universities’ legitimacy as well as small predictive relevance of environmental sustainability on social sustainability.
Discussion
This research is a response to the call to explore the relationship between sustainability and organizational legitimacy (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021). Specifically, we examine the structural relations between environmental sustainability, social sustainability and organizational legitimacy in the higher education sector. The results of our study show empirically that achieving environmental and social sustainability goals has a positive influence on organizational legitimacy. In addition, we test that there is a positive relationship between environmental sustainability and social sustainability. These results add to the field of knowledge on environmental and social sustainability as antecedents of organizational legitimacy as well as on the relationship between environmental and social sustainability.
Prior to this research, there have not been many studies on the effect of social sustainability on organizational legitimacy (Del-Castillo-Feito et al., 2022). This relationship had been partially described by researchers who noted a positive effect on legitimacy when organizations perform activities that bolster racial and gender equity (Blanco-González et al., 2020; Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Díez-de-Castro, 2021; Díez-Martín, Blanco-González, & Prado-Román, 2021; Ely & Thomas, 2001). Our model extends this relationship by incorporating organizational transparency. By doing this, we gain a more comprehensive view of the effect of social sustainability on legitimacy. Future research could compare the effects of the different component actions in support of social sustainability on organizational legitimacy. This would help us to understand which actions are most socially legitimated. To build on this research, researchers could refer to prior studies on the legitimization of social responsibility (Marens, 2013).
Earlier authors affirm that there is a positive relationship between corporate social responsibility and organizational legitimacy (Hu et al., 2020; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011). Specifically, they focus on proving that environmental management policies have a positive effect on legitimacy (Finch et al., 2015). Our results confirm those results within Spanish universities. This is relevant because it extends our knowledge on the relationship between environmental sustainability and organizational legitimacy in highly visible contexts with strong institutional pressures (higher education) which had not previously been analysed (Miotto, Del-Castillo-Feito, & Blanco-González, 2020). Our results could serve as a base for future researchers to confirm these relationships in different cultural settings and sectors.
We confirm that there is a relationship between environmental sustainability and social sustainability. This link had not been previously noted in the literature. Prior research has focused more on environmental than social sustainability (Ahi & Searcy, 2015). Our results suggest that organizational commitment has followed a similar path, starting with being preoccupied with environmental sustainability and then evolving to include social aspects.
University managers can leverage our findings in multiple ways. The most consistent result is that sustainability can be a strong tool to legitimate organizations. In consequence, it should be integrated into organizational strategy. This implies that those responsible for planning and sustainability should work closely together to integrate their activities. In the specific case of Spanish universities, we found that many have their own sustainability plans, but they are not integrated with their strategic plans, their decision-making centres or even the curriculum (Miotto & Rom, 2017). This analysis shows that organizations that drag their feet in sustainability initiatives will see their legitimacy affected.
Our study also highlights the need to make sustainability actions visible by focusing on constantly communicating them to stakeholders. Sustainability will increase legitimacy, but only if it can be clearly perceived across all its dimensions (Prado-Roman et al., 2020). Social interest in sustainability has increased (Frandsen et al., 2013; Varadarajan, 2017), which has created disclosure mechanisms based on transparency (Aerts & Cormier, 2009; Cüre et al., 2020; Michelon et al., 2019). In the case of universities, it is important to have two-way communication through the use of social networks (Saraite-Sariene et al., 2019). Future research could analyse which type of communication has the greatest influence on the legitimacy of universities.
Finally, this investigation is not without limits. The results have been obtained in the higher education sector. Analysis between state and private universities could be a new line to explore. Future researchers could consider analysing this relationship along primary and secondary education, as well as other sectors. Furthermore, they could also weigh the effect of cultural context on the structural model by performing a cross-cultural analysis. Also, variable measurement is not homogeneous for other sectors, reducing the feasibility of comparing results among studies from other sectors. Besides, we measured legitimacy by using information contained in organizational results. Even though this measurement method has been used previously (Deephouse et al., 2017), legitimacy evaluation is a process in which external forces influence individual perceptions (Bitektine & Haack, 2015). Future studies could expand on this work by obtaining primary information from stakeholders. In turn, this would facilitate a better understanding of the effect of sustainability on the different dimensions of legitimacy and would allow a more efficient use of organizational resources to adjust to social expectations.