Based on institutional and resource-dependence perspectives, this article identified the research trends by using bibliometric analysis and explored whether and how legitimacy affects the enterprises' financial and non-financial performance by adopting a three-level random-effects meta-analytic model. A total of 15,696 observations included in 32 studies spanning 2004–2021 revealed a positive association between legitimacy and performance with a close to medium effect size. We found that enterprises in Asia and Africa were more inclined than those in North America and Europe to utilize legitimacy to direct performance. In addition, innovative industries and industries adopting innovative strategies significantly moderate the association between legitimacy and performance. Regarding different dimensions of legitimacy, the results demonstrated that general, regulatory, and environmental legitimacy play vital roles in moderating the legitimacy-performance relationship. This article is the first review to combine bibliometric analysis and meta-analysis to synthetically prove that legitimacy positively correlates with the performance of enterprises.