Establishing Mechanism Of Organizational Legitimacy

With the help of legitimacy oriented alliance,enterprises can overcome the obstacles from institutional environment,establish organizational legitimacy,and develop their own business.The study on establishing mechanism of legitimacy is not enough,especially in Chinese market which institutional environment is changing fast.By combining institutional theory,stakeholder theory and resource-based view,this paper explore the formation of 14 cases which are formed because of regulatory,normative or cognitive pillar of institutions and different kinds of stakeholders in Chinese market.Then four cases are analyzed deeply to explore the mechanism of cognitive legitimacy oriented alliance.Four strategic alliances are explored to understand how the cognitive legitimacy oriented alliance forms and evolves.The result shows that resource complementary and the institutional pressure from upstream enterprise contribute to the form of alliance.Alliance's value creation by sharing key information and new knowledge do benefit to four enterprises' improvement in technology.In this process,there come new changes of the institutional environment and the firms' resources and capabilities.During the cooperation period,the growth of the enterprise's ability,the endorsement of the alliance and the decrease of the cost of other customers' search have contributed to the recognition of the cognitive legitimacy of the local enterprises.With the new characteristics,the institutional environment and the stakeholder reshape the co-evolution of cognitive legitimacy oriented alliance in this study.The combination of institutional theory,stakeholder theory and resource-based view is a innovation.And the case study in this paper enriches the application of institutional theory in Chinese market.