Legitimacy is crucial for the survival and growth of strategic ventures inside larger corporations. Yet, 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. Drawing on the analysis of a longitudinal case study of the development of a sustainability initiative within a major diversified firm, we identified 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. Our study contributes three distinct mechanisms that facilitate the legitimation and the integration of a strategic initiative within the corporate strategy. Moreover, we show how the sequence of legitimation mechanisms matters and highlight the inherently sequenced nature of strategic venture legitimation.

中文翻译：

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作为合法性创造的战略风险投资：可持续性案例

合法性对于大公司内部战略企业的生存和发展至关重要。然而，尽管取得了很大进展，但关于战略风险与合法性关系的研究，即内部战略举措如何获得合法性并成为公司战略的一部分，仍然没有得到充分探索。通过对一家大型多元化公司可持续发展倡议发展的纵向案例研究的分析，我们确定了三种核心合法化机制——播种、激励和繁荣——将可持续发展的概念从内部广泛共享的道德义务转变为一个商业案例。我们的研究提供了三种不同的机制，这些机制促进了企业战略中战略举措的合法化和整合。而且，