Legitimating the Stack: How Judgements Form Within Algorithmic Assemblages
Legitimacy theory assumes evaluators judge identifiable objects: an organization, a practice, a technology. Algorithmic assemblages challenge this assumption because they constitute the object of evaluation across nested levels, each with distinct actors, artifacts, and emergent properties. What evaluators encounter depends on where in the assemblage they direct their attention. We ask: how do legitimacy judgments form and transform within algorithmic assemblages? We investigate this question through a longitudinal discourse study of vibe coding, the practice of using AI to generate software through natural language prompts rather than traditional programming. Over thirteen months, vibe coding moved from a newly coined term to a practice that attracted billions in venture capital, triggered security crises, earned Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year, and contributed to an estimated $1 trillion decline in software sector capitalization before being absorbed into mainstream engineering practice. Drawing on a multi-source corpus of developer communities, technology media, and practitioner platforms, we trace how legitimacy evaluations engaged differentially with three levels of the assemblage (foundation models, AI coding tools, and development routines) and how judgments formed at one level propagated and transformed as they crossed interfaces between levels. We develop a process model of cross-level legitimation that extends legitimacy theory to the multi-level algorithmic configurations central to contemporary organizing, and advances assemblage theory by theorizing how emergent properties at each level become objects of evaluative judgment.
Vern Glaser
Vern Glaser is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise in the Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management at the Alberta School of Business, where he also serves as the Academic Director of the Alberta Business Family Institute. His research program centers on algorithmic organizing: how algorithms, AI, and data analytics reshape organizational routines, decision-making, and strategy. His work has appeared in journals including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies, and Organization Theory, and his paper “The Biography of an Algorithm” received the James G. March Prize from EGOS. He also recently co-edited Algorithmic Organizing in the Research in the Sociology of Organizations series. Vern is also recognized for advancing research methods in management, including foundational work on topic modeling in organizational research and, more recently, on the use of generative AI to promote discovery in qualitative inquiry. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Duke University, and a BA in Economics from UCLA.
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