Legitimacy and Innovation: Looking Into the Maritime Industry

This chapter focuses on the concept of legitimacy within the maritime industry, highlighting its pivotal role in shaping firm behaviors and innovation outcomes. Legitimacy is understood as the societal acceptance of a firm’s adherence to norms and values, which significantly influences strategic decisions and overall performance. Specifically, the research centers on external legitimacy, where stakeholders outside the firm validate its credibility within the community, and investigates how this legitimacy - encompassing regulative, normative, and cognitive dimensions - interacts with network embeddedness. This includes both relational and structural ties with stakeholders, to analyze its impact on innovation outcomes. Drawing on insights from institutional theory and the family firm literature, the study aims to elucidate the complex dynamics that link legitimacy and network relationships to varying levels of innovation performance in maritime family firms. Anticipated findings suggest that high normative and cognitive legitimacy, combined with strong network ties, may paradoxically lead to lower innovation performance. The chapter contributes to both family firm and maritime management literature by elucidating underexplored dynamics of legitimacy and network effects on innovation.