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This study examines how narratives and legitimacy formation affect crowdfunding capital assembly from distributed, heterogeneous investors.

The study explores a dataset of 80,181 projects from Kickstarter, a rewards-based crowdfunding platform, between 2009 and 2013. We explore the link between project-related variables, legitimacy formation and outcomes.

Entrepreneurs design narratives and create project legitimacy by exploiting crowdfunding platform-specific features. First, lower funding targets and shorter campaign durations confer positive project legitimacy. Second, entrepreneurs exploit reward-levels as narrative tools that encourage funders to engage with the project. Third, visual pitches transmit a broader sociocultural narrative, leveraging emotional rather than financial reasoning. We also note certain gender effects.

Crowdfunding platforms allow entrepreneurs to pitch business ideas to a broad online audience. We show that project legitimacy, including both structural and narrative elements, is linked to crowdfunding outcomes. In particular, legitimacy is co-created through the generation of a persuasive narrative linking the entrepreneur and investor cohort.

Entrepreneurs use crowdfunding platforms to generate a coherent narrative around unfamiliar business models. Generic platform tools may be set and manipulated in online crowdfunding pitches to support project legitimacy. Ultimately, these are less important than establishing an affinity-based narrative that engages and exploits investor participation. Successful crowdfunding pitches co-author the project story with investors.

Crowdfunding has been traditionally understood as simply an online-mediated venture resource assembly tool. A narrative framework highlights the critical role of legitimacy formation in a disintermediated investment system.

The establishment of legitimacy is one of the critical issues faced by international projects that involve a host of stakeholders and are implemented in challenging institutional environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the establishment of legitimacy and factors that affect this process in the context of international projects.

A qualitative, multiple case study of three international projects conducted in challenging institutional environments.

Based on a theoretical and empirical analysis of three case projects, the article identifies different strategies that may be enacted to gain project legitimacy in international projects. Furthermore, a set of propositions that describe the effects of different factors (the project's external environment, the project network, the process of legitimation) that explain the extent of the challenge faced by international projects in establishing legitimacy are developed.

The article sets the scene for theory development on project legitimacy. A better understanding of legitimation strategies and of the factors that affect the establishment of legitimacy in international projects advances research on project‐environment interaction and supports managers in proactively managing project legitimacy.

In the UK, major IT public procurement projects regularly fail at significant cost to the taxpayer. The prevalence of these failures presents scholars with a challenge; to both understand their genesis and to facilitate learning and prevention. Functional approaches have revealed numerous determinants of failure ranging from procurement specifications to risk escalation, but true and definitive causes remain elusive. However, since failure is not itself an absolute truth, but rather a concept which is reached when support is withdrawn, the survival of a project depends on there being sufficient belief in its legitimacy. We use critical hermeneutic methods and the conceptual lens of legitimacy to reveal powerful legitimating influences that enable and constrain action, but which are not analysed in the retrospective government inquiries that determine lessons learned.

The purpose is to explore how the process of action research (AR) can support building legitimacy and organizational learning in innovation project management and portfolio practices in merger contexts.

Meta-reflection on method issues in Action Research through an action research case study with an innovation group during an organizational change process. This case demonstrates an example of an action research cycle focused on building practitioner legitimacy rather than problem-solving.

Key findings include (1) demonstrating how AR can be used for building legitimacy through visualizing the innovation process, and embedding those visuals in top management practices of the organization; and (2) demonstrating how AR can work as an organizational learning tool in merger contexts.

This study focuses on an action research cooperation during a two-and-a-half-year period. Thus, findings offer the depth of a medium term case study. The processes of building legitimacy represent this particular case, and can be investigated in other organizational contexts to see the extent to which these issues can be generalized.

For researchers, this paper offers an additional type of AR cycle to consider in their research design which can be seen as demonstrating a form of interplay between practitioner action and organizational level legitimacy. For practitioners, this paper demonstrates a connection between legitimacy and organizational learning in innovation contexts. The discussion of how visuals were co-created and used for building legitimacy for an innovation process that differs from the standard stage gate model demonstrates how engaging in AR research can contribute to developing visuals as resources for building legitimacy and organizational learning based on connections between theory and practice.

This case rethinks AR practice for innovation project management contexts to include legitimacy and organizational learning. This focus on legitimacy building from organizational learning and knowledge conversion contributes to our understanding of the soft side of innovation project management. Legitimacy is demonstrated to be a key concern for innovation project management practices.

This study aims to explore the knowledge spillover mechanism in big science projects (BSP) from an institutional perspective by elaborating on the dynamic relationship between institutional dualism and legitimacy.

The study conducts an exploratory research and adopts the grounded theory methodology in the context of BSP. Data draw mainly upon nine semi-structured interviews.

The knowledge spillovers in BSP are driven by institutions, which work through mechanisms of legitimacy perception. Formal and informal institutions influence organizational and individual behavior through legitimacy pressure and support. Formal institutions impose legitimacy pressure on organizations and individuals, forcing them to cooperate closely to solve problems; informal institutions enable them to adopt innovative strategies and positive attitudes through legitimacy support; all these promote knowledge spillovers in research and development (R&D) activities, engineering practice and regional interaction. Knowledge spillovers enable stakeholders to realize their R&D advancement, manufacturing promotion and management sophistication. Further, regional knowledge diffusion and culture transmission promote regional innovation and social capital accumulation.

The study develops a theoretical model that shows how knowledge spillover mechanisms happen in BSP from an institutional perspective (the trigger, the channels/process and the impacts). More specifically, this explanation is provided by explaining how formal and informal institutions influence organizational and individual behavior through legitimacy perceptions.

First, policymakers should recognize and value the guiding, supporting and coordinating role of formal institutions and enrich capital forms to release the legitimacy pressure of stakeholders. Second, management of BSP needs to be capable of coordinating stakeholder relationships and interactions, while management should focus their attention on fostering good organizational routines and shared group value. Third, the local culture and customs should be taken into consideration since it can be an enabling or constraining of BSP. Finally, industries can take advantage of the opportunity to coordinate their R&D efforts to gain competitiveness.

First, the authors introduce the institutional perspective to analyze the construction process of BSP, which helps to better understand the interactions of stakeholders under the influence of institutions, the dynamic process and impacts of knowledge spillovers. Second, the authors are committed to contributing to the development of knowledge spillover theories by adopting an institutional perspective. The authors furthermore explore and propose the presence of a dynamic mechanism between institutional dualism and knowledge spillovers. In consequence, the authors introduce the concept of legitimacy perceptions, which is a bridge to understanding the interaction between them. Third, by explicitly discussing the actual meaning of our framework, the authors explore the unique potential of institutional arrangement in promoting the knowledge management of complex cross-border cooperation, while seeking to promote its management and administrative practices.

Circular economy advocates innovations that upcycle wastes in the food supply chain to generate high added-value materials. These innovations are not only disruptive and green but also they are often initiated by startups, leading to the emergence of novel open-loop supply chains connecting actors in food and non-food sectors. While earlier research has highlighted the need to seek legitimacy for disruptive innovations to survive and grow, little is known about how these innovations occur and evolve across sectors. This paper aims to elaborate on this mechanism by exploring the function of the circular economy as a boundary object to facilitate legitimacy-seeking strategies.

An exploratory multiple-case research design is adopted and features food waste innovation projects with multi-tier supply chains consisting of a food producer, a startup and a buying firm. The study is investigated from the legitimacy and boundary object lenses.

The findings proposed a framework for the role of a boundary object in enabling legitimacy-seeking strategies for novel food waste innovations. First, the interpretative flexibility of the circular economy affords actors symbolic resources to conduct manipulation strategy to achieve cognitive legitimacy. Second, small-scale work arrangements enable creation strategy for the new supply chain to harness moral legitimacy. Finally, pragmatic legitimacy is granted via diffusion strategy enabled by scalable work arrangements.

This paper provides novel insights into the emergence of food waste innovation from a multi-tier supply chain perspective. It also highlights the key role of the boundary object in the legitimacy-seeking process.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the European public sector accounting standards (EPSAS) project development path to explore how governance and legitimacy issues intertwine when a new standard-setting system is developed.

A qualitative interpretative multimethod approach is adopted, which encompasses document analysis and participative observations.

The analysis shows the role of governance dimensions, including institutional participation and consensus, in the process for securing the legitimacy of accounting standards and the related setting processes, pointing to the critical issues emerging throughout the development of the EPSAS project.

The definition of public sector accounting standards poses significant challenges to the accounting profession and regulators alike. A paradigmatic case of such challenges is represented by the decisions to develop harmonised EPSAS. A key contribution of this paper is to connect legitimacy dimensions with network governance, offering a view of the input, output and procedural dimensions associated with decisions to legitimise EPSAS and how these may be affected by network governance.

This paper studies early stages of actor mobilization for institutional change within Swedish esports.

The authors employ interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The authors’ findings explain how actors become motivated to act in critical reflections linked to conflicting legitimacy judgments and emotionally charged personal struggles. Moreover, the findings show how, as actors get activated in collective action, they identify efficacy lines around valid domains and experience emotionally charged collective endeavors. Furthermore, the findings explain how particularities in early experiences project legitimacy aspirations that orient collective action toward validity ends and particular values and ideals shaping actors' grassroots movements.

This study adds to legitimacy and institutional change theory through individual actors' perspectives, providing key insights into how they are motivated, activated, and oriented. This study is the first to investigate grassroots activists' personal stories in esports.

This paper aims to analyze the requirements for stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships in times of sustainability crisis. Referring to the COVID-19 pandemic as a sustainability crisis that has sensitized consumers and other stakeholders to corporate responsibility for social and sustainability issues, a conceptual framework for stakeholder integration is developed from which implications for designing the potential, process and result quality are derived.

In this conceptual paper, design options for stakeholder integration are derived from open innovation and service management research. Specific crisis-related determinants of stakeholder integration are derived from current corporate social responsibility (CSR) and crisis research taking into account the opportunities and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design options and crisis-related determinants are then combined to a conceptual framework for stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships in times of crisis. Based on this framework, research propositions are derived that provide insights into the design of the potential, process and result quality of stakeholder integration.

This paper shows that the COVID-19 pandemic can be viewed as a sustainability crisis, which places special entrepreneurial demands on stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships. The pandemic offers potential for integrating a large number of stakeholders and has emphasized the need for integrating a broad range of stakeholders. Higher skepticism of stakeholders toward companies' CSR engagement in the pandemic has raised stakeholder demands for early integration. Higher skepticism and CSR involvement have rendered active forms of integration even more relevant, which, however, should still be adapted to the respective stakeholder prerequisites. The pandemic has increased the need for constant and comprehensive exchange of data on project results between stakeholders and the project leading organization. Measurement of target achievement can be promoted by establishing stakeholder commitment with regard to the target measures on the collective and relationship levels of the partnership. Finally, the pandemic has reinforced the need for more dialogical forms of communicating sustainability project results.

Solving problems and exploiting opportunities in times of crisis require a high degree of entrepreneurship and creative leadership in order to gain new ideas and overcome resource deficits. Sustainability project partnerships in which various stakeholders contribute resources and knowledge to collaborate on idea development and finding solutions to sustainability issues are suitable for this. However, previous approaches to stakeholder integration in open innovation and service management research largely neglect the crisis context and only a few are related to sustainability. In CSR and crisis research, stakeholder-related approaches to coping with crises tend to be underrepresented, and the comprehensive concept of stakeholder integration has so far hardly been considered as an approach to crisis management. By taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic as a sustainability crisis, this paper provides new impulses for the integration of stakeholders in sustainability project partnerships in times of crisis. Recommendations for the design of the potential, process and result quality are derived, which provide insights for project leaders and stakeholders alike. In addition, implications for public policymakers are derived, who are assigned an increasingly active role in the pandemic and who can contribute to the success of sustainability project partnerships by setting suitable framework conditions. The developed concept can be expanded to include further company-related determinants and offers a starting point for empirical analysis in the still underexplored research fields of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing and sustainability crises.

This paper explores the peculiarities of sustainable crowdfunding from the project perspective. The research question is: what are the distinctive features of sustainable crowdfunding, in terms of crowdfunding motivation, platform choice, crowdfunding costs and relationships with backers?

The current study follows a qualitative approach, through conducting in-depth interviews with representatives of sustainable projects, which have had successful crowdfunding campaigns. The selected projects represent various industries and crowdfunding models.

Sustainable entrepreneurs have both financial and non-financial motivations for crowdfunding. A distinctive feature is the importance of community engagement, since the community spirit of crowdfunding is well suited to sustainable projects. The choice of the crowdfunding platform is more complex for sustainable entrepreneurs, as they need to consider the platform's sustainability. Sustainable entrepreneurs also have to put more effort into their communication activities with potential backers, to compensate for the intangibility of sustainability claims. Moreover, they need to have a greater focus on building relationships with backers due to both the community spirit of their projects and legitimacy issues.

The current paper contributes to the limited literature on sustainable crowdfunding and the literature on funding of sustainable businesses and can act as a foundation for further research in this field. Current findings also have high practical value. Crowdfunding platforms may use the insights provided here to better meet the needs of sustainable entrepreneurs, while sustainable entrepreneurs can better understand what they need to pay attention to in their crowdfunding campaigns.