Legitimating Institutional Entrepreneurs : How Incumbent Response Endorses Technological Discontinuities

Institutional entrepreneurs that introduce a technological discontinuity to a highly institutionalized field often struggle and strive for legitimacy. While it is known that these institutional entrepreneurs need support from multiple external actors in order to succeed, it is the incumbents' response behavior to the technological discontinuity that has been neglected as an important factor of the legitimation process. In this article I describe how three different response types namely adopting, defending, and ignoring, determine the course of the legitimation. I argue that incumbent response is able not only to hinder but also to enhance the legitimation process of the institutional entrepreneur and its technological discontinuity.