The Life Cycle of an Internet Firm: Scripts, Legitimacy, and Identity

We study, longitudinally and ethnographically, the construction of legitimacy and identity during the life cycle of an entrepreneurial Internet firm, from inception to death. We utilize organizational scripts to examine how social actors enact identity and legitimacy, maintaining that different scripts, both contested and consent–oriented, become the source of action for acquiring legitimacy and creating organizational identity. We show that …