Research On The Growth Of Family Business Under Legitimacy Constraints

Legitimacy has a significant effect on the growth of enterprises,which determines their abilities to obtain both internal and external resources.About legitimacy theoretical research,legitimacy restriction on businesses growth has become a consensus,the existing literature focuses on the relationship between legitimacy and new ventures and innovation.But the existing literature almost has no research about legitimacy’s special constraints on multi-structure family business system.At the same time,most of existing studies research mechanism of organizational legitimacy of enterprise behavior from the perspective of static and overall,has no research about legitimacy restriction on businesses growth from the process perspective of the legitimacy,namely,the dynamic evolution rule of cognitive,regulation and normative legitimacy has not been excavated,which is the left space to research.Therefore,based on questionnaire survey,designed with three dimensions of family business growth item and three levels of cognitive,regulative and normative legitimacy item,in order to reveal the multi-stage,multi-dimensional socialization process of family business growth and the dynamic evolution law of the legitimacy constraint.At the same time,this paper regards institutional change of family business growth process as the connecting point,builds a three-dimensional collaborative development framework of family business under legitimacy perspective,integrates the two clues of current literature which are the institutional issues and legitimacy issues about family business growth,and measures the institutional change of family business and synergistic growth from legitimacy perspective.Through statistical analysis about 369 questionnaires,we argue that different legitimacy has different influence on family business growth at different development stages.Along with the family business growth path,cognitive,regulative and normative legitimacy in turn becomes the main constraints;At different growth dimensions of family business,representing the family system of family dimension,representing the business system of business dimension,and representing operating environment system of the social dimension,the rule of the legitimacy constraint on three dimensions of family business growth is consistent with the law of the evolution.Finally,the research explains the three-dimensional synergistic growth rules of family business under the perspective of legitimacy.The theoretical significance of this study is: Firstly,the thesis emphasizes the dynamic influence process of legitimacy on the growth of enterprises,to make up for the previous research too much to study its effect on the survival and growth of the enterprise from the static perspective,enriching the legitimacy of application research literature.Secondly,the growth of family business is divided into three dimensions(family,business and social dimensions),we regard the expansion of the scale and scope of network in different dimensions as its growth.We recognize the growth of family business from the perspective of network-based growth,further enrich the literature of family business growth.Finally,Synergistic growth is a long-term development demand of the family business that with multi-system structure characteristics.However,which is a blind spot in the existing literature,therefore,this paper can make up for the deficiencies of the previous literature,and provide a useful exploration for the future research on the Synergistic growth of the family business.The research results have important practical implications for the development of China’s family business: firstly,in the early stage of the establishment of the family business,we should strive to improve the popularity of the enterprise,to obtain cognitive legitimacy.After the development to a certain stage,we should perfect the rules and regulations of enterprises,to obtain the regulation legitimacy.In the mature stage,enterprises should meet the requirements of the public values,to obtain normative legitimacy.Secondly,Synergistic growth of family business must adhere to the systematic,integrated and coordinated development concept in three dimensions,must keep balance,coordinated development,balanced force,moving simultaneously,finally achieving the sustainable development of family business.