The Formation and Evolution of the Resilience of Resource-Based Enterprises Under Continuous Institutional Shocks: An Explanation from the Perspective of Organizational Legitimacy

From the perspective of organizational legitimacy acquisition, this study elucidates the sources and formation pathways of resource-based enterprises’ resilience in the face of institutional shocks. It explores the evolution of resilience with the improvement of the resource-based enterprises’ legitimacy under institutional constraints. Using the new mining rights of the resource-based enterprises as the measured variable of organizational resilience under institutional shocks, this study describes the adaptability of the resource-based enterprises to institutional change from the subdivision dimension of pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy. A multi-period fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) approach is adopted, which takes Chinese mining enterprises listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange as samples to obtain the formation pathways and dynamic evolution characteristics of the resilience of the resource-based enterprises under the institutional shocks of the “supply-side structural reforms” (2016–2019) and the “dual-carbon” goals (2020–2022). The results indicate that the differences of institutional shock strength and constraint degree promote different resilience formation mechanisms. The high intensity and hard constraints of the supply-side structural reforms promote the high-resilience pathways of the enterprises based on pragmatic legitimacy. The guiding and incentive orientation of the “dual-carbon” goals promote more improvement in the moral legitimacy of the enterprises, forming high-resilience pathways of “pragmatic legitimacy + moral legitimacy”. Under continuous institutional shocks, influence legitimacy has a universal effect on the formation of high resilience by the resource-based enterprises, and structural legitimacy, as the core condition of the high-resilience pathways, demonstrates continuity. By increasing the subdivision dimension of moral legitimacy and mitigating the limitations of pragmatic legitimacy, resource-based enterprises can achieve breakthroughs in their pathways to high resilience. This study provides valuable insights and guidance for resource-based enterprises seeking to overcome future institutional shocks and achieve resilient growth.