How Chinese companies deal with a legitimacy imbalance when acquiring firms from developed economies

Chinese companies are increasingly pursuing acquisitions from developed economies (DE) with varying degrees of success. Because of their late-comer and emerging-economy (EE) status, Chinese firms are often perceived as having less legitimacy than the firms they are acquiring. In this study, we examine how Chinese companies’ deal with this legitimacy imbalance by investigating five cases where Chinese firms acquired firms from more developed economies. We find that there is a difference in internal and external legitimacy vis a vis internal and external stakeholders, and that their relative importance changes over the course of the merger process. External legitimacy is more important in the pre- and during- merger stages, while internal legitimacy plays a more important role in the post- merger stage. In addition, we find that during the three stages of the merger process, Chinese MNEs utilize various strategies in an attempt to address the legitimacy imbalance when entering a developed economy, such as relationship building, cooperation with co-investors, allowing the acquired company to operate independently in the first few years, and operational commitment. We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners and suggest future research directions.