Legitimation of New Ventures: A Review and Research Programme

Abstract

Research on how new ventures (NVs) achieve legitimacy is fragmented and rests on taken‐for‐granted assumptions that require problematization. Following a systematic literature review, I identify five distinct perspectives on NV legitimation: an institutional perspective, a cultural entrepreneurship perspective, an ecological perspective, an impression management perspective, and a social movement perspective. After comparing and contrasting these perspectives, I synthesize them into a generative and integrative typology. Based on this typology, I develop a new research programme. The programme widens the extant scholarship agenda by challenging its shared assumptions and contributes to further integration of the literature by building bridges between perspectives.

How Nascent Community Enterprises Build Legitimacy in Internal and External Environments

“…One of the greatest challenges for nascent ventures and entrepreneurs is that they lack the legitimacy needed to convince resource holders to back their ventures. Thus, new ventures need to actively search for legitimacy to be perceived as appropriate organizations by resource providers (KIBLER et al, 2014;ZIMMERMAN and ZEITZ, 2002;ÜBERBACHER, 2014;LOUNSBURY and GLYNN, 2001). …”

“…The institutional entrepreneurship literature has started to explore how competing logics can coexist alongside each other (TRACEY et al, 2011). However, resource-holders are generally described as uniform, and how new ventures appear legitimate to resource holders in different contexts and environments with potentially conflicting demands is not well understood (ÜBERBACHER, 2014). Our focus is not on the different types or dimensions of legitimacy, but rather on the process of legitimation and how legitimacy is developed in an interplay between different stakeholders and within different environments.…”

“…However, one of the greatest challenges for entrepreneurs trying to launch new activities is that they lack the legitimacy needed to convince resource providers to back their ventures (KIBLER et al, 2014;ZIMMERMAN and ZEITZ, 2002;ÜBERBACHER, 2014). Hence, legitimacy is seen as a resource in its own right and also as a necessary precursor to the acquisition of other critical resources (ZIMMERMAN and ZEITZ, 2002;LOUNSBURY and GLYNN, 2001).…”

“…Hence, legitimacy is seen as a resource in its own right and also as a necessary precursor to the acquisition of other critical resources (ZIMMERMAN and ZEITZ, 2002;LOUNSBURY and GLYNN, 2001). While there is a growing understanding of the role of legitimacy as a crucial resource and the first step in mustering support for emerging commercial ventures (ÜBERBACHER, 2014;VAN WERVEN et al, 2015), legitimacy has not been addressed within the community entrepreneurship literature. This paper explores how nascent CEs in the cultural sector build the legitimacy needed to introduce novel and radical ideas into rural communities.…”

Balancing “what matters to me” with “what matters to them”: Exploring the legitimation process of environmental entrepreneurs

“…Our research responds to calls for a more process-oriented approach to understanding (new venture) legitimation (Barley, 2008;Drori and Honig, 2013;Garud et al, 2014;Überbacher, 2014;Voronov et al, 2013). Our process-oriented approach helps explain how entrepreneurs We also explained the importance of the development of perspective taking which allowed our entrepreneurs to accommodate the perspective of their audiences in their legitimation work.…”