Extant research explains how entrepreneurial ventures can serve as a beacon in emerging market categories, blazing a trail for other ventures and contributing to their successful legitimation. However, what happens when a beacon is unsuccessful? Using a qualitative case study of particularly sensitive interviews and secondary data from the social venture accelerator category, we examine how subsequent entrants overcome recursive legitimacy challenges caused by beacon underperformance and failure. Through our study, we develop a model of legitimacy repair work, which consists of decoupling legitimacy assessments, prioritizing distinctiveness identity claims, and enabling selective generalization. Following legitimacy loss, we highlight how actors prioritize and sequence distinctiveness claims over legitimacy claims, which we refer to as distinctive legitimacy. We also identify a key mechanism of selective generalization, where identity claims are made to direct audience attention toward some (and not other) attributes of the organization and category to acquire resources. Our findings have important implications for new venture legitimacy: mitigating legitimacy loss, the process of optimal distinctiveness, and legitimacy management over time.

现有研究解释了创业企业如何成为新兴市场类别的灯塔，为其他企业开辟道路并为它们的成功合法化做出贡献。但是，当信标不成功时会发生什么？使用对特别敏感的访谈和来自社会风险加速器类别的二手数据的定性案例研究，我们研究了后续进入者如何克服由信标表现不佳和失败引起的递归合法性挑战。通过我们的研究，我们开发了一个合法性修复工作模型，其中包括解耦合法性评估、优先考虑独特性身份声明以及实现选择性概括。在合法性丧失之后，我们强调参与者如何优先考虑和排序独特性声明而不是合法性声明，我们称之为独特的合法性。我们还确定了选择性概括的关键机制，其中提出身份声明以将观众的注意力引导到组织和类别的某些（而非其他）属性上以获取资源。我们的发现对新创企业的合法性具有重要意义：减轻合法性损失、优化独特性的过程以及随着时间的推移合法性管理。