Untangling Legitimacy Complexity: Huawei’s Engagement with Government and Media

Abstract

Despite its phenomenal success in China and beyond, Huawei has encountered serious and prolonged legitimization challenges in some prominent Western countries. We explore a cross-border stakeholder engagement perspective and elaborate that Huawei has had trouble coping with the governments and media in developed Western countries due to its stakeholder engagement deficiencies and local negative national stereotyping it faces. We discuss some possible adaptation approaches such as negotiation and defensive strategies and conclude with scholarly and managerial implications.