Attaining legitimacy in temporary business

What is it about?

How new entrepreneurs acquire the legitimacy they need to establish businesses in industries where projects are temporary is little understood. This is important because compared with more enduring business new entrepreneurs can face time constraints in the building of legitimacy necessary to survive. This paper investigates how entrepreneurs in the UK independent television sector manage this problem. Its key finding show that they sequence the role that each project may play in development of their early firm networks.

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Why is it important?

What is insightful about this study is that it shows adopt behavioral processes that facilitate the acquisition and maintenance of legitimacy. By leveraging the signal that each project conveys entrepreneurs can sequence these to ease the process of legitimacy-building. In contrast with prior research that shows legitimacy can be dichotomous (firms have it or they do not), or t continuous, this study suggests that it is a much more piece-meal rather than linear process in frequently-changing temporary project business as projects as projects are formed then dissolved repeated. This means that the attainment of legitimacy can be a much more dynamic and fluid process because they can attain it in one part of their business but nor another. If a firm can synchronize its development at both project and firm level over a period, and after a point when this becomes stable they may more readily more readily attain cognitive legitimacy.