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Owing to dual constraints including liability of foreignness and liability of origin when emerging multinationals internationalize, they inevitably face the challenge of overseas legitimation. However, few studies have explored how latecomers cross the threshold of legitimacy in the dynamic context of transnational operation. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the evolution process, triggers and specific strategies of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing of emerging multinationals.

Through the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Sci & Tech Co., Ltd, this study investigates the periodical characteristics of overseas legitimacy threshold crossings and the co-evolution among critical factors influencing the legitimation process in the host country.

First, it summarizes that the legitimacy threshold in the host country experiences a sequential process from pragmatic legitimacy to normative legitimacy, and finally cognitive legitimacy. It is an inevitable choice for emerging multinational enterprises to realize and sustain legitimation from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, it reveals that the triggers for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy include periodically dynamic factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as well as cross-stage spiral interaction effects. Third, it determines the specific strategies for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy, namely, replacement, upgrading and reconstruction of organizational identity, and reveals the important role of insisting on the country-of-origin Facebook in promoting the legitimation.

This study enriches the legitimacy threshold crossing literature from an evolutional perspective, especially the traditional static legitimacy research. This study also reveals the key impacting factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration – and their evolution process interacted with the legitimation process.

The emerging multinationals should break the stereotypes from developed markets in that only creating new cognitive patterns through active legitimate strategies can they truly cross the legitimacy threshold in the host country. The emerging multinationals also need to retain their own home country legitimacy traits – Facebook and balance the relation between the image of the home country and the image of host country.

This paper investigates the process of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing for emerging multinationals in a dynamic context of transnational operation, particularly with respect to the evolutionary role played by international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration.

This study aims to examine conditions in both inter- and intra-alliance contexts within an oligopolistic alliance industry operating across multiple markets. It focuses on how a focal firm’s optimal performance depends on nuanced evaluations of the trade-offs associated with coopetitive synergy, and on decisions about whether to collaborate or compete with its members.

The authors analyze the six leading global container shipping firms within two major alliances (The Grand Alliance and the New World Alliance) from 2003 to 2010, gathering 7,825 news articles from the Cyber Shipping Guide, a comprehensive global container shipping business database in Japan.

The findings reveal the following: (1) the focal firm cooperating with members of a rival alliance decreases the level of inter-alliance competition. (2) The focal firm cooperating with members of a rival alliance increases the level of intra-alliance competition. (3) Increased inter-alliance competition negatively impacts the performance of the focal firm. (4) Increased intra-alliance competition negatively impacts the performance of the focal firm.

Global container shipping firms should make optimal decisions about which firms to cooperate with, focusing on those that contribute to the focal firm’s overall synergies and thus performance.

This study contributes to the literature on coopetition in strategic alliances by extending the concept of dynamic coopetition to include strategic alliance groupings, and by examining how focal firm members cooperate in both inter- and intra-alliance contexts.