From the organizations’ perspective, maintaining legitimacy in such contexts has been considered
relatively unproblematic (Patriotta, 2011; Scherer et al., 2013) as it entails following adaptive
strategies and conforming substantially (or even merely symbolically) to the dominant institutional
logics (Suchman, 1995; Elsbach, 1994; Scherer et al., 2013).
3
Nonetheless, whilst the implementation of a adaptive strategy to maintain the corporation with its
main audiences is a necessary phase, it cannot be considered sufficient to assure the maintenance of
audience support. Audiences evaluate competitive advantage and other sources of reassurance that
supporting the company is worthwhile from a rational perspective. This restoration process may be
complemented by the corporations’ power over resource dependent audiences. Independent
audience decisions are based on the competitive advantage of firm in each business. When their are
untouched, the adaptive strategy leads to audience support and successful business rehabilitation
processes with all audiences, even with those that were initially harmed. However, if competitive
advantage is feeble independent audiences will not sustain the weak business (or corporation) even
if adaptive strategies have been implemented. The presence of an unharmed competitive strategy is
crucial to the selection of which parts of an organization (or the organization as a whole) can be
reintegrated with all the main audiences of the company after a CSI scandal, including the
“harmed” audience.
The richness of the empirical setting allows us to highlight that a significant difference
between firm characteristics that plays a crucial role in determining the reactions of the main
constituent audiences and, consequently, the possibility for maintain the legitimacy. The post-crisis
turnaround processes to succeed is the possession of sound source(s) of competitive advantage in
one (or more) of the business(es) in which the firms operates