Building a Legitimacy Barrier from a Institutional Perspective

摘要

Legitimacy barrier is an important instrument for the incumbents to delay and even prevent new competitors from entering the market. It does mean much to understand and guide firms' strategic conduct if the inside of the black box of building legitimacy barrier could be seen. Based on the previous studies, this research develops a theoretical model describing how to build a legitimacy barrier. The incumbents can build legitimacy barriers successfully through manipulating the organizational field's legitimacy and affecting the stakeholders' cognition in the field. More specifically, it includes (1) raising the threshold value of some specific legitimacy dimension and accusing the new competitors of having done enough in that dimension, or (2) making a new division of legitimacy dimensions and attacking the new competitor for its having done something that is not allowed in that legitimacy dimension.