Strategies for creating new venture legitimacy

Journal article, 2015

New ventures, being heavily subjected to liabilities of newness, are seen to engage in legitimacy strategies to overcome these liabilities. Building on an adapted theoretical framework of organizational legitimacy, self-reported weekly diaries of twelve entrepreneurs were analysed to identify strategies used by new ventures to create legitimacy. New ventures appear to prefer pragmatically related strategies over moral and cognitive ones, and adopt malleability with respect to moral strategies. The novelty of the venture technology increases the focus on conformity strategies, whereas more established technologies use manipulative strategies to gain legitimacy. New ventures also appear to engage strongly in moral selection strategies in terms of goal formulation.