TY - JOUR

T1 - Strategic Venturing as Legitimacy Creation

T2 - The Case of Sustainability

AU - Reihlen, Markus

AU - Schlapfner, Jan-Florian

AU - Seeger, Monika

AU - Trittin-Ulbrich, Hannah

N1 - This article has greatly benefitted from the guidance of associate editor John Prescott and three anonymous reviewers. We would also like to thank Johann Bronstein, Stefanie Habersang, Thomas Gegenhuber, Elias Kaiser, Anna Krzeminska, Katrin Obermeit, Dennis Schoeneborn, and Ferdinand Wenzlaff for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 33rd Annual International Conference of the Strategic Management Society, in Atlanta, GA, USA, and was awarded with the SMS Best Conference PhD Paper Prize. We would like to thank Sarah Kaplan and Tomi Laamanen and the remaining PhD Paper Prize Committee for honouring our work in this way and the conference participants for their invaluable comments on our article. Furthermore, we would like to thank members of the Leuphana Organization Studies Group (LOST) for their helpful feedback. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2022/3/1

Y1 - 2022/3/1

N2 - Legitimacy is crucial for the survival and growth of strategic ventures inside larger corporations. Yet, despite much progress, research on the strategic venturing-legitimacy nexus, that is, how internal strategic initiatives gain legitimacy and become part of the corporate strategy, remains underexplored. Drawing on the analysis of a longitudinal case study of the development of a sustainability initiative within a major diversified firm, we identified three core mechanisms of legitimation – seeding, energizing and prospering – that turned the concept of sustainability from an internally widely shared moral obligation into a business case. Our study contributes three distinct mechanisms that facilitate the legitimation and the integration of a strategic initiative within the corporate strategy. Moreover, we show how the sequence of legitimation mechanisms matters and highlight the inherently sequenced nature of strategic venture legitimation.

AB - Legitimacy is crucial for the survival and growth of strategic ventures inside larger corporations. Yet, despite much progress, research on the strategic venturing-legitimacy nexus, that is, how internal strategic initiatives gain legitimacy and become part of the corporate strategy, remains underexplored. Drawing on the analysis of a longitudinal case study of the development of a sustainability initiative within a major diversified firm, we identified three core mechanisms of legitimation – seeding, energizing and prospering – that turned the concept of sustainability from an internally widely shared moral obligation into a business case. Our study contributes three distinct mechanisms that facilitate the legitimation and the integration of a strategic initiative within the corporate strategy. Moreover, we show how the sequence of legitimation mechanisms matters and highlight the inherently sequenced nature of strategic venture legitimation.

KW - strategic venturing

KW - internal corporate venturing

KW - legitimacy

KW - process theory

KW - sustainability

KW - case study

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111025600&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/8836e42e-e91f-388a-9f55-020a34623112/

U2 - 10.1111/joms.12745

DO - 10.1111/joms.12745

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 59

SP - 417

EP - 459

JO - Journal of Management Studies

JF - Journal of Management Studies

SN - 0022-2380

IS - 2

ER -