Legitimate to whom? The challenge of audience diversity and new venture legitimacy

We examine how entrepreneurs manage new venture legitimacy judgments across diverse audiences, so as to appear legitimate to the different audience groups that provide much needed financial resources for venture survival and growth. To do so, we first identify and describe the different mechanisms by which entrepreneurs can establish new venture legitimacy across diverse audiences. We then account for the institutional logics that characterize different new venture audience groups, and use this as a basis for uncovering how and why the legitimacy criteria for a new technology venture may vary depending on the audience. We then consider how leaders of entrepreneurial ventures may use framing as a means to manage legitimacy judgments across various audiences, and thereby improve their chances of accessing critical financial resources for venture survival and growth

The role of network density and betweenness centrality in diffusing new venture legitimacy: an epidemiological approach

To survive and grow, new ventures must establish initial legitimacy, and subsequently diffuse this legitimacy through a given population. While the notion of initial legitimacy has received substantial attention in the recent literature, diffusion has not. This work endeavors to outline the legitimacy diffusion process via drawing parallels with the field of epidemiology. Ultimately, to effectively diffuse legitimacy (and grow) a firm must gain positive judgments of appropriateness from members of a given network. Importantly, as with diseases, the characteristics of the network are critical to the diffusion process. A relatively dense network is posited to invoke a normative evaluation process by its members, and can be difficult for new ventures to access, but subsequent diffusion of new venture legitimacy can be rapid. A less dense network, on the other hand, is posited to invoke a pragmatic evaluation process by its members, and is likely easier for new ventures to access initially, but may result in lower levels of new venture legitimacy diffusion in the long run. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Strategic Organizational Change: Exploring the Roles of Environmental Structure, Internal Conscious Awareness and Knowledge

We argue that strategic organizational change is best viewed as a multidimensional phenomenon consisting of various degrees of environmental structure and internal conscious awareness. And, by combining this conceptualization of change with a model of organizational knowledge transfer developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), we gain a better understanding of the types of change strategies that firms will pursue, the processes they should use to implement these strategies and the likely performance outcomes from these strategies. Specifically, we suggest that the levels of tacit and explicit knowledge needed to implement the new strategies are key determinants of firm performance following strategic organizational change. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.