FROM THE EVALUATOR'S PERSPECTIVE: A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL JUDGMENTS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bitektine, Alex; Gillespie, Nicole; Lange, Donald
• 署名单位: Concordia University - Canada; University of Melbourne; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0363-7425
• DOI: 10.5465/amr.2020.0405
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: organizational trust; reputation; legitimacy; MODEL; firm; performance; industry; POWER; categorization; antecedents

摘要

To deepen understanding of social judgments of organizations, we build on work that has adopted the evaluator's perspective to develop a comprehensive functional approach to social judgments. We identify a set of adaptive challenges faced by evaluators in their relationship with organizations and theorize how the judgments they make can help resolve those challenges. In doing so, we clarify how social judgments are rooted in comparisons between the organization's properties and some social referent, and extend understanding of the interrelated nature and complementary role of diverse social judgments. We explain how social judgments-such as legitimacy, trustworthiness, reputation, status, and authenticity-form a robust system of interrelated judgments that allows evaluators to collect and triangulate multiple judgments of different types, using judgment inputs from three different sources: (1) first-hand inputs, based on the evaluator's own observations and information about the organization; (2) borrowed inputs, based on judgments made by others; and (3) taken-for-granted judgment inputs acquired through the evaluator's socialization and education. We conclude by suggesting ways to reorient research toward unduly neglected elements of social judgment theory through systematic examination of the functional utility that social judgments provide for evaluators.