The Diffusion of the Legitimate and The Diffusion of Legitimacy

Abstract

This paper models the implications of innovations – concrete products and behaviors – being nested within institutions – abstract cognitive schema for evaluating the legitimacy of innovations. In effect,
social actors assess the legitimacy of innovations vis-a-vis conformity to institutions such that a sufficiently legitimate innovation may be adopted without direct reference to the behavior of peers. However when innovations lack institutional legitimacy actors default to proximately
peer-oriented heuristics like information cascades. Eventually if enough similarly aberrant innovations achieve widespread popularity, their conventions will become institutionalized as legitimate. Thus density creates legitimacy but this density can be at the level of the particular innovation or of the institution within which it is embedded.