TY - GEN A1 - Reif, Karina A1 - Gegenhuber, Thomas Karl A1 - Urbig, Diemo A1 - Bürger, Robin T1 - Can radicals get a seat on the negotiation table? A Dynamic Perspective on Legitimation Processes T2 - Academy of Management Proceedings N2 - The growing body of the cultural entrepreneurship literature seeks to understand how actors facing the liability of newness gain legitimacy in the eyes of resource holding audiences. However, less is known about how dynamics play out overtime when an actor with a lack of legitimacy seeks to regain it. In this paper, we conduct a qualitative, in-depth case study of a radical soccer fan community facing an identity-threatening political decision (i.e., relocating their fan zone within their stadium). Realizing that they lack a seat on the negotiation table and their traditional forms of protest bore no fruits, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to promote their cause (i.e., keeping the fan zone). The radicals successfully raised money and - even more important - convinced several national and international audiences, ultimately resulting in a legitimacy gain in the critical local political audience's eyes. This paper demonstrates how digital artifacts such as crowdfunding serve as a mechanism for dissociating with illegitimate elements while reconfiguring the links with the environment to gain legitimacy. Moreover, we demonstrate that actors with a lack of legitimacy first need to gain endorsements from other actors before turning to the actor holding the most critical resource. KW - Soccer KW - Legitimacy KW - Crowdfunding Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.14300abstract SN - 0065-0668 SN - 2151-6561 VL - 2021 IS - 1 PB - Academy of Management ER - TY - GEN A1 - Reif, Karina A1 - Gegenhuber, Thomas Karl A1 - Urbig, Diemo A1 - Bürger, Robin T1 - A Lost Cause? A Process Perspective on How Outsiders Overcome Stigmatization T2 - Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings N2 - While we have a great deal of scholarship on legitimacy, our understanding of how stigmatized actors seek to (re-)gain legitimacy remains quite limited. We seek to enhance our understanding of such processes through a qualitative, in-depth case study of a radical soccer fan community that, when faced an identity-threatening event, launched a crowdfunding campaign that ultimately succeeded in enhancing their legitimacy for their cause and enabling them to have a voice in a central strategic decision on the redesign of their club's soccer stadium. We leverage this case to develop a model on how stigmatized groups might be able to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of certain audiences. We show that first, the crowdfunding campaign created a digital and temporal space allowing them to disassociate stigmatized and associate legitimate elements (i.e. artifact-based affiliation). Second, we theorize how various association tactics were drawn upon over time, facilitating an interrelated set of dynamics between what we label manual and forced association. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our study for future research on legitimation processes related to stigmatized groups. KW - Crowdfunding KW - Soccer Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2022.14592abstract SN - 0065-0668 SN - 2151-6561 VL - 2022 IS - 1 PB - Academy of Management ER -