Literature provides insights into various mechanisms for achieving legitimacy via adaptation. Yet we know little about how internationalizing firms can break away from existing legitimacy conventions and still achieve congruence. We investigate how internationalizing firms selectively reconstruct meanings of market categories as sources of legitimacy. We qualitatively examine internationalizing craft beer industry across four countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and New Zealand) and find that breweries engage in stretching, corroborating, and molding market category meanings. We extend current theorizing on legitimacy by demonstrating how actors orchestrate cultural codes of their market categories to conform to legitimacy prescriptions that matter.

文献提供了通过适应实现合法性的各种机制的见解。然而，我们对国际化公司如何能够摆脱现有的合法性惯例并仍然实现一致性知之甚少。我们调查国际化公司如何有选择地重建市场类别的意义作为合法性来源。我们定性地研究了四个国家（澳大利亚、捷克共和国、丹麦和新西兰）的国际化精酿啤酒行业，发现啤酒厂参与延伸、证实和塑造市场类别的意义。我们通过展示行为者如何协调其市场类别的文化代码以符合重要的合法性规定来扩展当前关于合法性的理论。