Strategies for building cognitive legitimacy in non-Western contexts: lessons from Kenyan sharing economy firms

Purpose Attracting a vibrant customer base of service providers and users requires sharing economy firms to possess cognitive legitimacy. However, much of the literature focuses on the strategies that Western sharing economy firms use to build cognitive legitimacy. This study centres on non-Western sharing economy firms and addresses the unanswered question of how such firms build cognitive legitimacy. Design/methodology/approach The study is exploratory and utilises data from 13 sharing economy firms originating and operating in Kenya. Primary data were collected through a combination of 16 in-depth, face-to-face interviews and were complemented by secondary data. Findings The findings reveal that the contextual dynamics prevalent in the Kenyan context, such as unorthodox customer niches, high competition, and informality, trigger the need to devise context-specific cognitive legitimation strategies, such as offline community infusion, hybridisation, formalisation, and resolving incumbent mishaps. These strategies complement each other. Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature on cognitive legitimacy, the sharing economy, and entrepreneurship in context by adopting a contextualised approach to understanding the cognitive legitimation strategies of sharing economy firms. This contextualised approach has largely been neglected in the literature.