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Legitimation of New Ventures: A Review and Research Programme

Journal of Management Studies

Published online on

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.