Victim-Group Legitimacy: An Argument for Extending our Understanding of Legitimacy after Crisis

Organizational legitimacy has been useful approach to studying relationship management in crisis. This presentation suggests an expansion of organizational legitimacy theory: victim-group legitimacy. Multiple recent cases of crisis involving historically marginalized groups (HMGs) suggest that organizations may not be fully prepared to respond to crises involving HMGs. Recent cases also suggest that publics now routinely see modern crises as chapters within larger marginalization narratives. Victim-group legitimacy acts as a framework for evaluating, interpreting, and responding to not only the crisis at hand, but the historical crisis between an organization and HMGs.