Legitimacy Of Entrepreneurship Research Articles

The Moderating Role of Entrepreneurial Narrative in the Impact of Environmental Regulation on Migrant Workers’ Entrepreneurial Legitimacy from a Green Entrepreneurship Perspective

Globally, environmental regulatory pressures are mounting, eliciting concern for their effects on migrant workers who return home to found businesses. These entrepreneurial migrants contribute to rural economic growth and urbanization, yet concurrently confront the challenge of stringent environmental rules. The study aims to dissect the environmental regulatory pressure’s influence on the legitimacy of these entrepreneurial migrants and the underlying mechanisms. It further investigates the role of a green entrepreneurial orientation as a mediator and the moderating influence of entrepreneurial narratives on this relationship. Utilizing quantitative research methodologies, the analysis is grounded in extensive, firsthand data from an empirical study of migrant entrepreneurs. The findings corroborate a direct link between environmental regulatory pressure and the legitimacy of migrant entrepreneurs while highlighting the mitigating impact of green orientation and the moderating role of narratives. Specifically, environmental regulatory pressure significantly enhances the legitimacy of migrant entrepreneurs. Green entrepreneurial orientation buffers this impact, while entrepreneurial narratives moderate the relationship. This research offers a novel theoretical framework for comprehending the legitimacy dynamics of migrant entrepreneurs amidst environmental regulation and provides actionable guidance for these entrepreneurs to pursue green entrepreneurship in compliance with regulatory demands.

Understanding legitimacy building in contexts through digital entrepreneurship

PurposeThis paper, through empirical evidence, presents a framework for exploring how entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of building legitimacy in a digital context. In so doing, this paper goes beyond the seemingly forgone conclusion that legitimacy is important for the entrepreneur's success by focusing on the contextualised mechanisms through which digital legitimacy is built.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical findings are drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 digital entrepreneurs in Nigeria, a leading example of the West African context and analysed using a phenomenological approach.FindingsThe paper shows how digital entrepreneurs in a non-Western context draw on an aspect of legitimation in the digital space, and in particular, highlights three mechanisms via which this takes place, namely: digital shielding, digital curating and digital networking. Presented via an inductive approach, the three mechanisms described in the paper provide a scaffold for thinking about and understanding entrepreneurial legitimacy within a contextual framework, which incorporates institutional, cultural and digital dimensions.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature on digital entrepreneurship by empirically identifying and theoretically elaborating themes that are important for understanding how entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of digital entrepreneurship and build entrepreneurial legitimacy in complex contexts.

How do social entrepreneurs compete? Entrepreneurial legitimacy in the Silicon Valley of humanitarian innovations

Social entrepreneurship has attracted much attention from celebrities, scholars, policymakers, and wealthy foundations. Yet little is known about this form of entrepreneurship beyond what is said in mission statements, autobiographies, and heroic narratives of social entrepreneurs. This paper contributes to this literature by discussing a feature of social entrepreneurship largely neglected by researchers: competition. Drawing on an ethnographic analysis inspired by Bourdieu, I argue that social entrepreneurs may not only compete for funds but also for legitimacy derived from resources such as personal recognition and economic capital.

Real or fictional? Digital entrepreneurial narratives and the acquisition of attentional resources in social entrepreneurship

Digital entrepreneurial narratives compensate for the limited interactivity of traditional entrepreneurship narratives. This is achieved by incorporating elements of social entrepreneurship into tangible, real or fictional scenarios, thereby providing immersive experiences for the audience. In this sense, social entrepreneurs construct shared meanings and form socially identifiable values through the joint participation, communication, and value creation of entrepreneurs and audiences. We conceptualized the digital entrepreneurial narrative and proposed documentary and fictional narratives as its most salient features. Then, we explored the effect of these narratives on attentional resources in a digital entrepreneurial narrative from the perspective of sensemaking theory. Based on novel methods of natural language processing and machine learning, the empirical results from an examination of 304 social entrepreneurs who participated in the short-video platforms indicated that both documentary and fictional narratives have a positive impact on the acquisition of attentional resources for social entrepreneurship. Additionally, we found the documentary aspect of digital entrepreneurial narratives attracts attentional resources by fostering a shared sense of meaningfulness. However, the mediating effect is less effective with fictional narratives. Our results broaden the study of entrepreneurial narratives, and also expand the content of social entrepreneurial legitimacy and sensemaking perspectives.

Habitus Reshaping through the Search for Entrepreneurial Legitimacy in the High Velocity Field

Using the conceptual peculiarity of Bourdieu's theory, in this paper we aim to provide a new theoretical contribution to the understanding of the relational dynamics of legitimation in entrepreneurship. In-depth, contextual examination of entrepreneurs in 70 companies in the computer programming industry was carried out to determine how legitimation practices are shaped in relation to the dynamics of the relationship between entrepreneurs and the social structure. We base the methodological strength of the research on the rigour of the grounded theory method, using multiple data sources and data collection techniques (in-depth interviews, observations, and qualitative and quantitative secondary data). Our results reveal that susceptibility to hysteresis of habitus is what strongly defines the directions of the search for legitimation. By elucidating them, we show the natural coexistence of entrepreneur profiles of conflicting legitimation strategies, while also contributing to the understanding of shaping the entrepreneurial habitus in the high velocity field.

Contribution of Psychological Entrepreneurial Support to the Strengthening of Female Entrepreneurial Intention in a Women-Only Incubator

This article explores the contribution of psychological entrepreneurial support, based on same-gender group mentoring, to the strengthening of female entrepreneurial intention in the specific context of a women-only incubator. In other words, it examines the combined effect of gender-based differentiation and group dynamics on the process of incubating women entrepreneurs. Indeed, according to the literature on female entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurs are faced with specific challenges that influence their entrepreneurial intention such as a lack of self-confidence, caused by gender stereotypes, and conflict between family life and entrepreneurial career. More precisely, our research aims to determine how psychological entrepreneurial support is implemented in the incubation process to overcome these specific challenges, and the mechanisms for strengthening female entrepreneurial intention analyzed at both intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. Thanks to a qualitative methodology, our findings suggest that psychological entrepreneurial support delivered via same-gender group mentoring, at the beginning of the incubation process, reinforces female entrepreneurial intention, thanks to a mechanism of external approval and a process of deconstruction of gender stereotypes about female entrepreneurship. Role modeling provided by same-gender group mentoring facilitates the identity work of women entrepreneurs in search of entrepreneurial legitimacy and enables them to overcome various psychological barriers related to a lack of self-confidence or pressure stemming from the family environment. We discuss the implications of our findings on related research into business incubators and the design of mentoring programs adapted to the needs of women entrepreneurs.

W(h)ither entrepreneurship? Discipline, legitimacy and super-wicked problems on the road to nowhere

The discourse of the twenty first century is increasingly a discourse of crisis – global warming, climate change, environmental degradation, health pandemics, geopolitical instability, poverty, enforced migration and refugee movements, among others. Increasingly these ‘grand challenges’ pose complex environmental and social problems that present radical uncertainty regarding the consequences of current actions and encourage multiple conflicting evaluations. We argue in this paper that in response to this ‘new world’ of super-wicked problems and hyperobjects, there is a unique opportunity for entrepreneurship to take centre stage, given that the entrepreneurial context itself is extreme in terms of uncertainty, time pressures, cognitive load, emotional reactions, and social interactions. However, there is a danger that this opportunity may be compromised by ongoing debates over the status, coherence, identity and legitimacy of entrepreneurship as a discipline. Accordingly, we argue for more problem-oriented research in entrepreneurship, not as an additional focus of attention but as foundational to the nature of the discipline itself. This argument is based on a broader discussion of the nature of scientific disciplines as the increasingly specialised division of knowledge and challenges the drive to establish entrepreneurship as a theory-led scientific discipline in the traditional mode. Commitment to the social legitimation of disciplinary discourse advocating problem-oriented entrepreneurship avoids the danger that consensus in the discipline is established at the expense of intellectual development, practical relevance and real impact.

External knowledge resources and new venture success in developing economies: Leveraging innovative opportunities and legitimacy strategies

This study draws insights from entrepreneurial opportunity and organizational legitimacy perspectives to specify an intervening role of opportunity recognition and the contingency effect of entrepreneurial legitimacy to explain how and when external knowledge resources are associated with new venture performance. The conceptual model is tested on primary data from 230 new ventures operating in a sub-Saharan African economy: Ghana. Findings from the study indicate that the relationship between external knowledge resources and new venture performance is mediated by opportunity recognition and that high levels of both strategic and regulatory legitimacy strategies strengthen the indirect relationship. Theoretical implications and new venture management lessons drawn from these findings are discussed.

Legitimacy Challenges in Terms of Succession Planning and Internationalization in Family Businesses

Venture legitimacy refers to the generalised presumption or perception that a business entity's distinct procedures are proper and convenient or desirable within specific socially constructed systems of values and opinions. Entrepreneurial legitimacy is obtained by conforming to distinct normative, cognitive, and structural norms within entrepreneurship and communicating adherence to these norms. This concept has been widely used in entrepreneurship, including family businesses (FBs), which is the focus of this paper.

Factors Contributing to the Escalation of Feminine Entrepreneurs in Tanzania: A Case of Mwanza City

The study aimed at exploring the examined factors contributing to the escalation of feminine entrepreneurs in Tanzania specifically in Mwanza city. One hundred and eighty (180) women were selected from four wards, namely Kirumba, Mirongo, Buhongwa, and Pasiansi using the purposive random sampling technique. The range of their ages was between 20 and 60 years. A cross-sectional design was adopted. The questionnaires and focus group discussion were adopted as methods of data collection in this study. Results of the study show that there are numerous factors that escalate the increase of feminine entrepreneurs in Mwanza city which include access to capital, education, political influence, social network, peace and security, the legitimacy of entrepreneurship, the need for lifetime achievement and development, livelihood diversification and family planning. These factors play a noteworthy role in influencing women's entrepreneurship. Other factors such as skills in entrepreneurship and internal motivation and creativity, social factors, and psychological factors were also discovered as the main factors behind the influence of women to join entrepreneurship. The study concludes that women engaged as entrepreneurs need to be assisted with the fundamental skills required establishing and running a successful business venture. The study recommends that the gender roles policy is not fully implemented, that is why there are still some jobs termed as for men and others for women.

How women in the UAE enact entrepreneurial identities to build legitimacy

This article examines how women enact an entrepreneurial identity as a means to secure legitimacy for their entrepreneurial activity. Using a netnographic analysis of media interviews with women in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we identify how women construct an entrepreneurial identity. Findings indicate that women highlight micro aspects of their identity, provide both personal and external sources of evidence to substantiate their claims, and adhere to potentially conflicting institutional logics. The findings contribute to knowledge of how entrepreneurship is legitimised and can disrupt institutional arrangements that constrain women. We provide both a gendered and novel contextual view, adding theoretical depth to contemporary conceptualisations of entrepreneurial legitimacy.

Impairment (in)visibility and stigma: how disabled entrepreneurs gain legitimacy in mainstream and disability markets

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurs’ use of linguistic practices, such as storytelling, in building legitimacy with customers and others is well documented. Yet, not all entrepreneurs may equally use or benefit from such practices in their legitimacy-building efforts. For those with stigmatized social identities, like disability, embodied properties and practices of non-linguistic, more visual kind, may be salient despite being under-explored in the entrepreneurial legitimacy studies. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines how disabled entrepreneurs gain legitimacy with customers and, more specifically, how impairment visibility shapes their capacity to do so. Drawing primarily on in-depth interviews with UK-based entrepreneurs, the article extends Suchman’s work by reconceptualizing his legitimacy-building strategies considering impairment visibility. It is argued that impairment visibility can both enable and constrain legitimacy depending on the product offering and the target market. Disabled entrepreneurs are found to adopt four embodied legitimacy-building strategies in the marketplace, each with specific implications for their micro-level interactions with customers.

Entrepreneurial Process Studies Using Insider Action Research: Opportunities & Challenges for Entrepreneurship Scholarship

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges of adopting insider action research (IAR) in entrepreneurial process studies. It employs a critical reflexive and narrative approach in examining our own lived experience in a real‐time digital entrepreneurial journey spanning three years while triangulating it with experiential knowledge in another role as dissertation supervisors. Our live case illustrates that IAR, when it combines reflective practice, cooperative inquiry and design science, represents a suitable but under‐exploited methodology for entrepreneurship scholarship. We build on this knowledge to offer a model for incorporating this methodology in entrepreneurship research and education. Consequently, we contribute towards responding to the need for phenomenon‐methodology fit in the discipline. Ultimately, the paper's value lies in its effort towards resolving the seemingly perennial question regarding the legitimacy of entrepreneurship as a distinctive domain of scholarship.

Hard Work as Identity Work in the Migrant Economy

The social construction of identity has associated certain identities and bodies with entrepreneurship and as enterprising and constructed other bodies as non-enterprising. In this study, I explore how stigmatized and racialized bodies constructed as ‘unentrepreneurial’ use the agency of hard work to negotiate stigma associated with their identity and project a coherent self-identity that is congruent with their entrepreneurial identity. By conceptualizing hard work as identity work at the intersection of entrepreneurship and embodiment, I theorize the body as a performative site of entrepreneurial legitimacy and identity negotiation. I argue that although hard work is critical to ventures’ growth and success, hard work can become racialized. Racialized hard work is excessive, overbearing and disempowering. A good proportion of the work done within the black migrant economy under the disguise of entrepreneurship is done as identity work. This study contributes to the research in identity work by identifying hard work as an intersectional site of identity work.

Religionsgemeinschaftliches Wirtschaften mennonitischer Unternehmer im 20. Jahrhundert

Abstract The article analyses the interrelation of religious ethics and entrepreneurship by looking at the case of North American Mennonites in the twentieth century. It focuses on the interpretation of meaning and the discursive negotiation of entrepreneurial legitimacy during a time of rapid socio-economic transformation. The article interprets Mennonite entrepreneurship as a form of embedded economic action within the religious community. It argues that this embeddedness shaped discourses, institutions and practices of entrepreneurship. Mennonite entrepreneurs engaged in debates with church representatives and academics, and they frequently participated in church committees. While the article refers to the reception of Max Weber in economic history, the focus on entrepreneurship in the religious community offers a new perspective that relates to the concept of ethnic entrepreneurship.

The effect of perceived legitimacy on new venture growth in Japan: a moderated mediation approach

PurposeThis article seeks to theorize and empirically examine the conditional mechanisms through which entrepreneurial legitimacy determines the success or failure of new ventures by building upon Zimmerman and Zeitz's (2002) causal process model of legitimacy.Design/methodology/approachWe gathered cross-sectional data from 266 Japanese new venture owners running their businesses across a variety of sectors and empirically examined whether, how and when legitimacy positively affects new ventures' performance by employing the SPSS PROCESS macro for moderated mediation analysis.FindingsThe results indicate that rich access to a pool of valuable resources fully mediates the positive effects of legitimacy on new venture growth. Furthermore, this study offers robust empirical evidence that prior entrepreneurial experience and competitive intensity as the internal and external contingency factors significantly moderate the indirect effect of legitimacy on new venture growth through resource accessibility.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough our analysis provides clear support for the view that important resources for new venture performance are gained through legitimacy, it does not offer precise clarifications for the type and sources of legitimacy and for the strategies that could be deployed to achieve legitimacy. Future studies should clearly distinguish tangible assets (e.g. financial resources) from intangible assets (e.g. tacit knowledge, networks and reputation) in terms of resource accessibility. Therefore, it should be worth scrutinizing the multiple dimensions of resources as potential mediators of the legitimacy-new venture growth relationship in greater depth.Practical implicationsFrom a policy perspective, this study suggests that a special emphasis needs to be placed on designing and carrying out policies aimed at increasing the visibility and credibility of entrepreneurship as a positive career path since public acceptance of entrepreneurship is essential to new venture growth. Furthermore, it is logical to conclude that achieving greater legitimacy is a pivotal strategic tool not only to overcome resource barriers but also to maximize a probability of survival, specifically for those entrepreneurs without prior experience and those operating in a fiercely competitive market environment.Originality/valueUnlike previous studies that have mostly presented the direct effect of entrepreneurial legitimacy on venture outcomes (Capelleraset al., 2019; Kibler and Kautonen, 2016; Pindado and Sánchez, 2017), our research empirically identified the potential complexities inherent in this relationship by performing a conditional indirect effect analysis.

Contextualizing Entrepreneurial Legitimacy: The Interplay of Internal and External Social Representations

Entrepreneurial legitimacy has been described as a trigger of entrepreneurial career choice and motivation, meaning that the propensity of an individual to engage in an entrepreneurial career increases with the social legitimacy of the career. However, more than a predictor of entrepreneurial success, entrepreneurial legitimacy is a complex social construct that determines the diffusion of entrepreneurial culture in different countries. This article aims to contribute to contextualizing entrepreneurial legitimacy by acknowledging its social genesis and dynamics, and by showing the variety of social interactions that it encompasses. The article examines the discursive strategies that entrepreneurs use to gain legitimacy among their audiences, and studies the representations and expectations attached to the figure of the entrepreneur by current and aspiring students in a Master’s program in Entrepreneurship. We gather the views of three social groups that actively engage in the social construction of entrepreneurial legitimacy in order to identify their convergent and divergent social representations of what it means to “be an entrepreneur.” Based on a questionnaire survey of 529 French participants and on 30 qualitative interviews, we present and compare the social representations of French entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship held by SME entrepreneurs and current and potential students in a Master’s in entrepreneurship program. We found that entrepreneurial legitimacy is a collective outcome of various social representations circulating in the public space that affects entrepreneurs’ ability to develop their businesses and their identities, along with their willingness and capacity to promote the entrepreneurial spirit in society.

Entrepreneurial engagement in a depleted small town: Legitimacy and embeddedness

AbstractOur study of entrepreneurial engagement within a depleted New Zealand community contributes to understanding the role of place and legitimacy in entrepreneurial practice. General decline characterised Stanton until a newcomer entrepreneur started several businesses that rejuvenated the town. She became a local economic hero to many stakeholders; but others deployed social narratives of place that drew on different values. Our analysis of interactions shows how perceptions of place legitimise or vilify and we demonstrate how place intercedes upon economically generated legitimacy of entrepreneurial practice. Social constructions of place and notions of embeddedness influenced this entrepreneurial enactment. Conceptually, we challenge ideas about universal legitimacy ensuing from economic entrepreneurial benefits. Our theoretical contribution offers socio-spatial propositions for understanding entrepreneurial legitimacy through place.

Designed entrepreneurial legitimacy: the case of a Swedish crowdfunding platform

ABSTRACTDigital entrepreneurs face the liability of newness, like any other entrepreneur. However, this liability of newness is manifested differently: it is mediated by an artefact, in this case a platform. This paper examines how a digital entrepreneur mediated by a platform can build legitimacy, something hitherto thought to be embedded within a social relationship (that is, one that a digital platform may be unable to have). Based on a qualitative research design, we develop the concept of “designed legitimacy”, and we point to how trust may not be enough to overcome the liability of newness. Rather, legitimacy is needed to attract users and resources, and thus for growth and success. We further highlight the means through which a platform may come to be seen as legitimate, namely by designing with legitimacy in mind: by using symbols in design, asymmetric legitimacy building, and sequential two-stage legitimacy building. We end the paper with propositions for further study and the implications of this research for digital entrepreneurship and platforms.

‘Embrace the masculine; attenuate the feminine’ – gender, identity work and entrepreneurial legitimation in the nascent context

This article critically analyses how gender bias impacts upon women’s efforts to legitimate nascent ventures. Given the importance of founder identity as a proxy for entrepreneurial legitimacy at nascency, we explore the identity work women undertake when seeking to claim legitimacy for their emerging ventures in a prevailing context of masculinity. In so doing, we challenge taken for granted norms pertaining to legitimacy and question the basis upon which that knowledge is claimed. In effect, debates regarding entrepreneurial legitimacy are presented as gender neutral yet, entrepreneurship is a gender biased activity. Thus, we argue it is essential to recognize how gendered assumptions impinge upon the quest for legitimacy. To illustrate our analysis, we use retrospective and real time empirical evidence evaluating legitimating strategies as they unfold, our findings reveal tensions between feminine identities such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and those of the prototypical entrepreneur. This dissonance prompted women to undertake specific forms of identity work to bridge the gap between femininity, legitimacy and entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that the pursuit of entrepreneurial legitimacy during nascency is a gendered process which disadvantages women and has the potential to negatively impact upon the future prospects of their fledgling ventures.