Exploring Legitimacy of Maritime Firms: Implications for Innovation

The study investigates the influence of legitimacy and network embeddedness on innovation performance, focusing on family firms in the maritime industry. Drawing from institutional theory and network embeddedness literature, the research aims to elucidate how different forms of legitimacy and aspects of network embeddedness contribute to varying levels of innovation outcomes. The study proposes to employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the causal relationships between legitimacy, network embeddedness, and innovation performance. The research anticipates that normative and cognitive legitimacy, along with strong relational and structural embeddedness, will be associated with lower levels of innovation performance. Additionally, the study examines the risk of embeddedness, highlighting the potential trade-offs between short-term conformity and long-term institutionalism. The findings from this research are expected to have both practical and theoretical implications for understanding the behavior of maritime companies and informing strategies to balance legitimacy concerns with innovation objectives.