Legitimacy Discourse and Mission Statements of Private Higher Education Institutions in Romania

Legitimacy, an important and well-studied concept in organizational sociology, has been approached from different perspectives. Probably the most widely accepted definition of legitimacy stems from Suchman. According to him “legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions” (Suchman 1995, p. 574).