Summer School

Summer School on New Venture Legitimacy

Organized jointly by the Organisational Legitimacy Association (OLA) and the Chair of New Venture Legitimacy (CLE), the Summer School on New Venture Legitimacy, which takes place on July 11^th and 12^th, 2021, aims to bring together researchers and players of the world economy (business owners, entrepreneurs, managers of a company, managers of an incubator, politicians, etc.) around the theme of legitimacy. 

Entrepreneurial legitimacy is a central concept, as it improves the survival chances of young firms (Delmar & Scott, 2014). It can be understood as an assessment of a firm's ability to meet the expectations of the actors that make up its environment (customers, suppliers, investors, public institutions, etc.). Surprisingly, legitimacy has mainly been analyzed from a theoretical point of view by researchers (Greenwood et al., 2017). The limited amount of research devoted to legitimacy from a methodological and practical point of view reflects the complex nature of this concept (Bitektine, 2011; Castelló, Etter, Årup Nielsen, 2016; Bitektine & Haack, 2015). 

In this context, the Summer School will present the latest research dealing with legitimacy in the field of entrepreneurship. These are carried out by national and international researchers. These academic works will be the foundations of discussions with world economy players.

 Exchanges between CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, managers, public decision-makers, incubator managers and researchers will aim to advance the understanding and implementation of the legitimacy concept. The themes addressed will include multilevel analysis of legitimacy, the legitimation process, how to acquire legitimacy through network or incubation process, legitimacy as a strategic or critical resource, legitimacy and social networks, legitimacy and internationalization. 

Organizational Legitimacy Association

The Organizational Legitimacy Association (OLA) created in 2020, brings together researchers and professionals from the business world around the issue of entrepreneurial legitimacy.

It aims to stimulate, disseminate and enhance knowledge about legitimacy, be it individual, entrepreneurial, organizational, societal, environmental and to create a community around the study of this subject. More specifically, it aims to create and maintain exchange networks around this theme and to promote exchanges, in particular between researchers, teachers, experts and business managers, political and financial leaders and support structures on all questions concerning the legitimacy.

OLA also wishes to contribute to the development of knowledge in terms of entrepreneurial legitimacy but also to popularize research and disseminate this knowledge.

New Venture Legitimacy Chair

Founded by Bénédicte Aldebert and Antonin Ricard, two researchers from the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches en Gestion d'Aix Marseille Université (Cergam) and Jean-Baptiste Jaussaud, an entrepreneur, the New Venture Legitimacy Chair (CLE) is the first chair dedicated to the study of the companie's legitimacy, including start-ups and their legitimation strategies.
This chair brings together international researchers and actors from the socio-economic world to reflect together on the issues of legitimacy in business in order to understand the role of legitimacy in the success of businesses, to develop and disseminate tools for diagnosing the legitimacy.

Concretely, it studies all the issues related to legitimacy, whether at the level of the entrepreneur, his company, or at a more general level of the public. It aims to

• Produce knowledge, by creating an entrepreneurship observatory to map the actors and networks.

• Bring together by gathering the best researchers in the world on the topic of entrepreneurship around a summer university, conferences, bootcamps, and workshops.

• Provide information by making scientific research on the topic of legitimacy accessible to practitioners.