Essays on legitimacy in the information systems context

• Main Author: Faheem Ahmed Shaikh
• Other Authors: Damien Joseph
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Business::Information technology::Management of information systems
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146203
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The first essay focuses on technology firms in the sharing economy and attempts to enrich our understanding of actions organizations take to gain legitimacy in this specific context. I draw upon literature in institutional theory that explains legitimacy and legitimation. News stories about one sharing economy organization’s actions are used to construct a typology of legitimation strategies from the ground up. The literature review and bringing together of theoretical legitimation strategies in itself can potentially help future research on legitimation. The operationalization of these strategies in practice in the sharing economy context contributes to literature in information systems. The second essay focuses on legitimacy repair following a data breach. Legitimacy issues arise when audiences probe an organization’s behavior during crisis events. A data breach is one such crisis event. A data breach might lead to unauthorized access of private individual data that might be put to illicit use, increasing the potential for harm. Since internal security practices are a mystery to external stakeholders, the firm is subjected to scrutiny, raising questions about its security practices. Given the negative repercussions that a firm might face, I examine whether subsequent positive actions can serve to mitigate them. Using data from a well-known repository of data breaches and news of firm actions following a breach, I find that positive sentiment about security practices in news media helps to lower market repercussions.