A typology of strategies for legitimizing an innovation. The case of a new health information system*

This research aims to identify strategies for legitimizing a hospital information system (IS). The hospital is a place of innovation, and reassessment for IS. Their legitimacy depends on the judgments of a group of individual or collective evaluators. This evaluator-based perspective, developed by Bitektine (2011), complements the dominant approach to legitimacy (Suchman, 1995). To legitimize an innovation, the actors of innovation have to convince the evaluators. However, little is known about their strategies for achieving this goal. Hence, our research question: how do innovating actors implement strategies to legitimize their innovation in healthcare? To answer this question, we studied the case of an innovative IS in healthcare. We focused on legitimation strategies and how they could modify evaluators’ judgments. For this dynamic and relational analysis, and for methodological purposes, we mobilized the pragmatist concept of transaction. Our theoretical contribution lies in a typology of legitimation strategies presented as ideal types (Doty and Glick, 1994). This is an explanatory typology in the sense of Elman (2005), in which each type is explained using the concept of trans-action.