Moral over matter – Organizational legitimacy construction through storytelling in entrepreneurial resource acquisition
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Corporate Communication
Language
en
Pages
93 + 5
Series
Abstract
The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the narrative strategies that entrepreneurs engage with in the process of legitimacy construction in the context of resource acquisition. This study has two main objectives. First, it aims to identify the types of narratives that new ventures present to investors in pursuit of resources. Second, it aims to show how these narratives contribute towards the emergence of organizational legitimacy and what specific types of legitimacy they construct. The study answers the call for research on how different modes of communication are used to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. The research objectives are approached through a qualitative case study. The empirical data consists of ten video-recorded pitches by early stage technology startups that were selected among the top ten finalists of a pitching competition held during an international entrepreneur-ship and technology conference, Slush 2017 in Helsinki, Finland. The pitches are first analyzed through the lens of Greimas’ actantial model to identify the subjects, objects, senders, receivers, helpers and opponents in the stories. Second, the narratives of the pitches are analyzed through the lens of Suchman’s typology of organizational legitimacy to uncover the types of legitimacy pursued. The theoretical framework builds on four streams of literature: entrepreneurial re-source acquisition, organizational legitimacy, storytelling, and the prior research on the use of narratives specifically in the context of entrepreneurship and organizational legitimacy con-struction. The analysis identifies three distinct types of narrative patterns that entrepreneurs construct in pitching for external resources: the socially conscious, the environmentally conscious and the economically conscious. The fourth identified type is a mix of the environmentally conscious and the economically conscious. With these narrative patterns, pitching entrepreneurs pursue all of the three types of organizational legitimacy to some extent. However, most of the entrepreneurs allocate a relatively small share of their pitch towards pursuing cognitive legitimacy and instead focus on building either moral legitimacy or pragmatic influence or disposition legitimacy through appearing as socially, environmentally or economically responsible. Most of the pitchers spend relatively little time on constructing pragmatic exchange legitimacy: assuring the audience of the favorable exchanges that investing in their venture would produce. The study contributes to research in the field of entrepreneurship by showing that most pitch-ers portray themselves as heroes with unique capabilities and resources for helping someone or something in need. The entrepreneurs are predominantly on a mission to make the world a bet-ter place–and only secondarily monetizing on their positive impact. In every story, technology is cast as an important helper of the heroes.Description
Thesis advisor
Moisander, JohannaKuismin, Ari
Keywords
entrepreneurship, narrative, organizational legitimacy, pitching, resource acquisition, storytelling