Large corporations represent complex and dynamic ecologies in which strategic ventures compete for organizational resources and managerial attention. This creates unique challenges for managers when trying to establish new internal ventures and to make these part a corporate strategy. New internal ventures must be accepted and viewed as desirable, proper, and appropriate. Gaining and maintaining legitimacy for an internal strategic venture is therefore vital for its success during the strategy-making process. However, 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.

A new study by Markus Reihlen, Jan-Florian Schlapfner, Monika Seeger, and Hannah Trittin-Ulbrich from Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany) provides important and novel insights into what managers do to legitimize their strategic ventures. Drawing on the analysis of a longitudinal case study of the development of a sustainability initiative within a major diversified firm, the authors identify 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.

Three mechanisms of legitimation

The three core mechanisms of legitimation – seeding, energizing and prospering – represent, in principle, toolsets for managers to legitimize strategic change. The seeding mechanism is ‘giving birth’ to a strategic venture, including managerial practices such as discursively reframing the strategic agenda and creating relational legitimacy through core team building. The energizing mechanism ignites the creation of legitimacy by involving powerful internal decision-makers with substantial resources as well as substantiating and producing symbolic meaning of the business case for sustainability. Finally, the third prospering mechanism enacts and integrates the business case of sustainability into corporate strategy by broadcasting this message in and outside the firm, hardwiring it in structures and systems, materializing it into new products as well as engaging in standard-setting committees with superordinate authorities and seeking recognition for the corporation’s sustainability achievements from external audiences.

Why the study matters theoretically?

The study contributes three new mechanisms – seeding, energizing, and prospering – to the current debate on strategic venture legitimation and corporate entrepreneurship. In addition, the study offers some interesting indications of how social (e.g., discursive, relational, and structural) mechanisms of legitimation are intertwined with brute materiality. The study further demonstrates that patterning of legitimization processes and practices matters for creating the momentum of strategic change and, as such, transitioning from one stage of development to the next. Finally, the study offers indications for interesting dynamics in the locus of control that appear through role changing amongst actors and audiences over time. This means that who drives the legitimation process may change, and so do the roles of certain actors involved in the legitimation process. For example, top management may be the audience as well as an active facilitator of legitimation at different stages in the legitimation process.

Managerial implications from the study

Legitimacy creation is a core ingredient of the manager’s job. In principle, the three legitimation mechanisms that the study identifies provide a useful toolkit for managers attempting to integrate new initiatives into corporate strategies successfully. However, managers should approach this toolkit with some caution. Notably, the study shows that the sequence of legitimation mechanisms matters. They require a careful temporal orchestration in order to facilitate mutual support for internal and externally directed legitimization practices. Managers also have to understand the multiple sources for demonstrating appropriateness at different development stages to facilitate mutual support for internal and externally directed legitimization practices.

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