1 Introduction

Our paper revisits one of the important questions of IB scholarship, investigating the ways through which multinational enterprises (MNEs) establish legitimacy when entering a foreign market. We study this question in a novel context of firms from the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) trying to commercialize their products in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), for which the liability represented by foreignness, and the resulting legitimacy challenges, prove particularly acute. First, in terms of the host country context, they are venturing into very distant and unfamiliar markets, despite numerous limitations resulting from their generally limited international experience based upon first entering countries that are proximate geographically, culturally, and institutionally (Kalotay, 2004; Trąpczyński et al., 2015). Second, they do not have “traditional” firm-specific advantages, such as superior technology or branding (Verbeke & Kano, 2015). Finally, they have rather limited support from their home-country institutions, and a poor network in SSA (as evidenced, e.g., by a limited number of Polish embassies in the region). Thus, they represent a new and extreme theoretical case of “strangers in a strange land”, and against this backdrop, we ask the research question: How do CEE firms establish legitimacy in SSA countries?

Two phenomena that have changed the global economic landscape over the last two decades make the research question particularly valid and interesting. First, an apparently ‘new breed’ of EMNEs from China, India, Brazil, Russia, and the CEECs have become increasingly important players in the global economy (Ramamurti, 2012; Ciszewska-Mlinaric et al., 2018). As Verbeke and Kano (2015) have argued, idiosyncratic sets of resources and capabilities are shaped by historical circumstances, as are EMNEs’ internationalization patterns. Therefore, the study of MNEs in their infancy, now made possible by the rise of EMNEs, is crucial in shedding light on the initial stages of internationalization (Hernandez & Guillen, 2018). Firms from the CEE face both general and specific difficulties along the path to this goal (Jaklič et al., 2020). A lack of brands and modern technologies, combined with general limitations of the tangible and intangible resources, reinforce their liabilities arising out of foreignness (Zaheer, 1995). They also neither can rely on the former colonial ties, nor do they have extensive experience in developing joint ventures and alliances. Hence they are outsiders vis-à-vis the networks on foreign markets (Glaister et al., 2020; Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). Finally, their liabilities of foreignness and outsidership are further aggravated by the liability of origin, i.e., the capability- and legitimacy-based disadvantages borne by MNEs as a consequence of their national origins (Ramachandran & Pant, 2010). While in theory these liabilities are well recognized, we still have only limited knowledge of how multinational entrants onto the market overcome them (Nartey et al., 2018), especially when they are as severe as in the case of CEE multinationals in SSA.

Second, even the least-developed regions are no longer “lost” to international business. Thus, while SSA was once considered a “hopeless continent”, it has now become the “last frontier” in the global economy (Adeleye et al., 2015; George et al., 2016; Mol et al., 2017; Zoogah et al., 2015). However, in this region, one of the major challenges in studying developments is the sheer diversity. The history, institutions, political and economic situation of countries here all vary greatly, and sometimes change rapidly. We therefore use the term SSA not in order to amalgamate diverse countries, but to denote a region that has experienced rapid socio-economic transformation and has become a battlefield for developed-country multinationals (DMNEs) and EMNEs, including African-born firms expanding in the region (Ngwu et al., 2014).

Our findings contribute to an understanding of the contingent nature of “liabilities” in IB literature (Edman, 2016; Nachum, 2010; Moeller et al., 2013; Ritvala et al., 2021). We find that the firms studied here indeed are trying to overcome their liabilities of foreignness, outsidership, and origin but in a particular way. They use their initial liabilities as starting points for overcoming liabilities and legitimacy development by constructing and employing narratives that neutralize the distance between themselves and local stakeholders. The content of these narratives leverages home and host-country development paths as building blocks to create stories and heroes that help bridge the gap between the two and enhance the legitimacy of an unknown foreign venture. Thus, our findings also shed light on the role of narratives in the internationalization process (e.g., Haley & Boje, 2014).

2 Theoretical Framework

The liability of foreignness (LoF) implies that firms doing business abroad incur certain costs that purely domestic firms would not incur. These costs may result from various sources, including the firm’s unfamiliarity with a local environment, spatial distance and the resulting transportation and coordination costs, economic nationalism in the host country environment, as well as restrictions from the home country environment (Zaheer, 1995). The “cognitive” aspect of LoF, posing a challenge to MNEs’ legitimacy in a foreign market, is “reflected in the lack of information about the MNE in the part of the host country environment, the use of stereotypes and different standards in judging MNEs versus domestic firms, and the use of MNEs […] as targets for attack by host country interest groups” (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999, p. 73). Importantly, as stated by Zaheer (1995), LoF will vary by “industry, firm, host country, and home country”. Therefore, although LoF, in general, relates to the additional burden that foreign firms have to face vis-à-vis their potential domestic counterparts, the “heaviness” of this burden is not equal for all foreign entrants.

Second, the liability of outsidership (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009) accommodates the importance of business relationships (networks), as well as mutual commitments, in firms’ processes of internationalization. Liability of outsidership results from absent or limited connections to local entities (e.g., business partners, customers, communities) (Li & Fleury, 2020). Since personal contacts and trusting relationships are often key to legitimization for firms entering foreign markets (e.g., Li & Zhou, 2010), the liability of outsidership poses a challenge to the legitimacy formation of MNEs (Li & Fleury, 2020).

Third, the liability of origin (also referred to as the “liability of emergingness”) (Ramachandran & Pant, 2010; Madhok & Keyhani, 2012) is related to discrimination against firms “by host country consumers and governments because of where they are from (i.e., their specific country of origin), as opposed to LoF’s focus on where they are not from” (Ramachandran & Pant, 2010, p. 243). The concept has been defined as “a credibility and legitimacy deficit in the eyes of host country stakeholders who [are] even more circumspect due to inefficient or missing knowledge of foreign emerging market multinational firms, their quality and safety standards, and the like” (Madhok & Kayhani, 2012, p. 31). Sources of the liability of origin are interrelated and may include less developed technological infrastructure and institutions, as well as a negative image of a particular home country (Ramachandran & Pant, 2010). For the liability of origin to be overcome, there must be the development of local stakeholders’ understanding, comprehension, and acceptance, achieved through a change in, or neutralization of, negative assumptions and stereotypes they continue to nurture regarding the foreign entrant’s home country (Stevens & Newenham-Kahindi, 2017).

While all three liabilities may have their own complexities for the focal firm, two commonalities are important. First, Kostova and Zaheer (1999) propose framing the liability of foreignness as a lack of legitimacy in the complex interactions pertaining between firms and their host-country environments (e.g., Estrin et al., 2009; Marano & Kostova, 2016; Kostova et al., 2008). Following this lead, other IB researchers have stressed that the legitimacy challenges posed by foreignness can be amplified or augmented by two additional complementary characteristics in the focal company, i.e., country of origin and a lack of embeddedness in local networks. Hence legitimacy became the concept in IB studies that helps to understand how companies cope with liabilities. Second, their impacts and the need to cope with them via legitimacy development are particularly acute at the time a firm enters a foreign market, as “over time MNEs may become more like domestic organizations in terms of their legitimacy” (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999, p. 77).

Following Suchman (1995, p. 594), we define the firm’s legitimacy as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 594). The legitimacy concept has three dimensions. First, pragmatic legitimacy reflects the organization’s evaluation of economic benefits as provided to its stakeholders. Second, moral legitimacy depends on the stakeholders’ value system and results from their normative evaluation of an organization by reference to judgments arrived at on whether its activity is the “right thing to do”. Third, cognitive legitimacy is defined as “the mere acceptance of the organization as necessary or inevitable” (Suchman, 1995, p. 82), and includes whether an organization is taken for granted or comprehensible. Further, following the seminal work of Kostova and Zaheer (1999, p. 1999), we argue that due to the social and cognitive nature of legitimacy, the process of legitimization is boundedly rational, and therefore complex and imperfect, especially for MNEs, as in their case “both the organization and the legitimating environment may lack the information necessary to correctly understand, interpret, and evaluate each other” (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999, p. 73). The legitimacy formation of MNEs entering a foreign market is overshadowed by liabilities, theoretically recognized in IB literature.

Studies on MNEs’ legitimacy focus on problems arising from MNEs’ multiple types of embeddedness (Meyer et al., 2011). Given their operations in many institutional contexts, these must manage conflicting stakeholder pressures (Jackson & Deeg, 2008). Conflicts over MNE legitimacy are likely to be more intense if home- and host-country institutions are dissimilar (Meyer et al., 2014). Moreover, and what is particularly relevant to our study, due to the bounded rationality of the legitimization process, MNEs’ legitimacy is often judged based on inferences drawn from classes of organizations (e.g., “Chinese firms”, “Polish firms”), due to the representativeness heuristic (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

Existing studies reveal many ways of establishing and protecting legitimacy in foreign markets, such as: cooperating with actors enjoying higher levels of legitimacy (Lu & Xu, 2006); imitating the local practices and structures of other firms in the same field (Chan & Makino, 2007); corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (Marano et al., 2017); listing the firm on foreign stock markets; deploying quality certification and pursuing collective action, e.g., via trade associations (Pant & Ramachandran, 2012); and using low-profile strategies (Meyer & Thein, 2014). A recent study of MNEs operating in Libya during political turmoil revealed that social strategies, such as maintaining strong ties with important social groups and providing socially valuable goods, might complement or substitute for government-focused political strategies (Darendeli & Hill, 2016). Another recent study by Stevens and Newenham-Kahindi (2017) investigated inter- and intra-country legitimacy spillovers among MNEs in East Africa. The authors argue that firms perceived as less legitimate will experience more political risks, which may arise from actions by both the host government (such as expropriating firms’ assets) and the host society (such as boycotts or riots). While the literature has addressed the importance of legitimacy for MNEs in foreign markets, our knowledge and understanding of the legitimacy formation stage, when neutralizing the initial liabilities of foreignness, outsidership, and origin seems necessary to enter and operate in a foreign market, remain limited.

3 Research Methods

3.1 Research Design and Case Selection

Our study began with a research question related to a contemporary phenomenon, i.e. the recent expansion of CEE multinational firms in the SSA region (Cibian, 2017). This is then the kind of “phenomenon-based research,” recently advocated in IB literature, which illuminates “specific events, trends, transformations, and evolutions, often at the country or regional level” (Doh, 2015, p. 610). We consider the novelty of the phenomenon we intend to study, the exploratory nature of our research questions, and – most importantly – the phenomenon’s context-specific character in employing case-study research methods. However, we also follow recent calls for methodological pluralism (Welch et al., 2011) and rich contextualisation (Delios, 2017; Michailova, 2011).

Our case-selection strategy was phenomenon-driven, as opposed to theory-driven (Fletcher et al., 2018). We identified cases that represent the focal phenomenon by first creating a list of companies from Poland, the largest CEE economy, which were active in SSA according to data publicly available from Poland’s Ministry of Development and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We then investigated secondary data, such as press releases, company websites, and reports on the “phenomenon of the expansion of Polish firms to SSA” published by the Polish government. This all allowed us to understand the variations within the initial group of firms, and to highlight organisational and industrial contexts (Poulis et al., 2013). The secondary data were instrumental in our final selection of studied companies, which met two criteria. First, they actually needed to be engaged in SSA, in the sense that they were committed to foreign expansion within that region. We therefore selected companies that were members of the Council of Investors in Africa, a knowledge-exchange platform bringing together the leading Polish firms operating in SSA. While the name of this platform suggests that participants “invest” in Africa, some of the participating forms used non-equity entry modes (e.g., long-term export contracts). Despite this, we believe that the access to this platform, highly visible in the Polish media, serves as a signal of commitment to expansion to African markets. Second, we focus on firms that have entered SSA for market-seeking reasons because typical liabilities are triggered when firms must face new competitors and new customers (Cuervo-Cazurra et al., 2007). Thus, we excluded investments on the part of firms seeking natural resources in extractive industries, which are subject to a different set of social and political challenges because they mostly transfer resources back to existing operations (Narula, 2018). As of 2016, Poland’s Council of Investors in Africa had 10 members, of which 3 operated in extractive industries.

While our sampling is based on the company’s commitment to engage in SSA (signaled by the company’s participation in Poland’s Council of Investors in Africa), not all studied firms were equally successful. By the time we finished our research, one of the studied firms had gone bankrupt, and the other had lost its contract to its competitor (also a Polish firm). Since our main focus are legitimizing strategies used at the moment of foreign entry, we do not study the long-term effects of each of the legitimizing strategies used by our sample firms. However, we believe that our study sheds some light on the complex relationships between legitimization narrative, home and host country context, and firm performance.

The underlying rationale for our case selection did not involve replication; instead, we studied multiple cases to ensure variation in the organisational and sectoral contexts. All the selected companies serve SSA markets by virtue of long-term contracts, which primarily target state-owned entities. While some have subsidiaries registered in Africa, others are non-equity-based operations. Considering MNEs’ “broadening array of production and investment models” (UNCTAD, 2011, p. 4), we included firms in this group that engage with SSA through non-equity investments, e.g. by delivering parts and knowledge to assembly plants owned by local partners.

3.2 Data Sources and Analysis

Five of the seven companies selected agreed to participate in the research project. The first company (Alpha) provides IT solutions and has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2004. It has grown through acquisitions, and focused initially on European markets, before expanding onto emerging markets, including the SSA region. In 2014, the company set up a subsidiary in Nigeria. It specializes in local software customization, implementation, development, and support. In 2015, the Alpha took over a Portuguese company, operating in Portuguese-speaking countries of SSA, and additionally – Namibia. Since then, Alpha has subsidiaries in Angola and Mozambique, and it conducts projects in Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, and Namibia. While it does not run subsidiaries in these three countries, it sends its managers and technicians to monitor projects with local customers.

The second company (Beta) produced agricultural machinery. In 2011, under the management of a second-generation family CEO, Beta was able to increase its international presence rapidly, with a focus on the SSA market. This family-controlled, stock-listed company acquired the brand and some of the assets (mainly technological) of what was previously Poland’s largest state-owned producer of agricultural machinery. During the country’s transition to a market economy, the state-owned company struggled with restructuring, became an example of an inefficient, state-owned “dinosaur,” and eventually went bankrupt. The family-run Beta entered SSA mainly due to long-term export contracts financed with a loan from the Polish government to the government of an African country. In 2013, Beta obtained its first contract (worth USD 50 million) in Ethiopia, where a state-owned company belonging to the Ethiopian army bought several thousand Polish tractors for the above-mentioned loan. In 2015, Beta signed a contract (worth USD 55 million in Tanzania), in 2015 – another contract (worth USD 30 million) in Ethiopia, and in 2017, a 100 million USD contract in Zambia. At this point however, the Polish government refused to finance the contract, and in 2021, the company terminated its contract in Tanzania. This year the company, now family-run, filed for bankruptcy.

The third company (Gamma) is also a family firm, having been founded in 1960 by the current CEO’s grandfather. It internationalised its operations in the 1990s by selling PVC products, such as windows and windowsills, but upon facing strong competition from cheaper Chinese imports, decided to use its core technical competencies to change market focus and enter on to a much less competitive market for vinyl sheet piles. It acquired technological licences from a US producer, but eventually developed its own technologies and products, and became the leading Polish provider of such equipment. It slowly internationalised its operations within Europe, entered Asia, and established a subsidiary in The Philippines in 2013. A year later, it entered the SSA region. In 2012, it set up a subsidiary in Nigeria. This was a bridgehead for future trade-based expansion into West Africa. In 2014 it opened a branch in Rwanda, to serve East Africa.

The fourth company (Delta) was founded in 1991 by two former managers of a purported Foreign Trade Organisation (FTO), i.e. a specialised, state-owned agency. As dedicated organisations, FTOs were responsible for import and export activities in communist countries. They were supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and specialised according to product lines; and their activities mirrored those of import and export agents. In Poland’s first transition years, most FTOs were privatised and restructured, with Delta established as a spin-off of one of these. Delta’s founders used their prior experience to specialise in international marine services, and later the export of ships and ship equipment, to the SSA region. In 1992, the company entered Nigeria, by first providing guarantee services of fishing boats, then being commissioned technical service of Nigerdock shipyard in Lagos, and finally, supplying passenger / vehicle ferries and fishing boats. In 2007, the company won a large contract for building fishing academy in Angola.

The fifth company (Epsilon) was established in 1951 as a state-owned enterprise producing technical clothing for Poland’s Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and State Fire Service. The company was privatised in the early 1990s, and has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 1996. In 2013, it delivered a complete tent basecamp, together with training, to the Nigerian army. A year later, it signed a contract for delivery of military equipment to Somalia.

Table 1 presents these companies’ profiles, along with our data sources.

Table 1 The firms studied: Key characteristics and data sources
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Table 2 presents activities of studied firms in SSA.

Table 2 Activities of studied firms in SSA
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In collecting our data between July 2016 and March 2023, we used multiple sources of evidence, including interviews with company members, annual reports, company presentations, news releases, and external analyses and publications. In triangulating the data, we attempted to “capture multiple voices”, rather than a “single convergent account” (Welch & Piekkari, 2017, p. 721). The respondents were selected using the key informant method (Myers, 2009), and all but two interviews were conducted on company premises. The exceptions were one interview conducted in an academic setting, as well as one via the telephone, on account of lockdown conditions having been imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. All interviews were in Polish, recorded whenever possible, and then transcribed. Durations were in the range 1.5–2.5 h, with each interview preceded by short direct meetings and/or telephone calls aimed at discussing scope and rationale. Detailed research notes from these conversations were also kept.

Our data analysis followed an approach commonly known as the Gioia methodology (Gioia et al., 2013). Our first-order analysis corresponds to the “open coding” phase, as described by Strauss and Corbin (1998) – in which we developed several initial categories (first-order concepts) in an attempt to adhere to our informant’s terms. Subsequently, we aggregated the first-order codes as second-order categories (themes). Ultimately, we searched for similarities and differences between the initial categories, in this way matching the “axial coding” phase as described by Strauss and Corbin (1998). Finally, we alternated between our codes and the literature until we were in a position to observe constantly recurring patterns allowing third-order aggregated dimensions to be derived. Figure 1 presents our data structure.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Data structure

Source: authors’ own work

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We then examined the interplay between concepts to develop an overarching framework as regards the building of legitimacy and creation of opportunity by CEE firms in SSA.

To gain a more comprehensive perspective, in 2023, we interviewed various local stakeholders, including government agency managers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists, consultants, and politicians in two countries in SSA, namely Angola and Nigeria. They corroborated both the perception of Polish firms’ liabilities and their use of narratives as a legitimacy-building strategy. The only novel insight these interviews yielded was related to the impact of commercial diplomacy in supporting the entry of MNEs, though it played a marginal role in the endeavors of Polish firms.

4 Research Findings

4.1 Initial Legitimacy Challenges

All the case-studied firms faced initial legitimacy challenges resulting from their origin, foreignness, and outsidership. First, as opposed to MNEs from countries with large amount of outward FDI, firms from Poland, an economy with rather limited international exposure, are “strangers” to stakeholders in SSA. As one of our respondents notes:

“Americans are (…) very active. They, of course, are a player who came in from the outside, but in other circumstances, built a relationship there very quickly. The problem is that when we, as a Polish company, appear in a new country, a new ministry, we are completely unknown. Because information about Poland or knowledge about Polish firms is very limited.” [CEO of Gamma].

Unlike their counterparts from the US, Western Europe and China, Polish firms could not count on strong support from home-country diplomacy or home country institutions. Despite the “Go Africa” program, which signalled the intention of the Polish government to support expansion within the region by sponsoring trade missions of Polish entrepreneurs to SSA, in terms of the real support from the Polish commercial diplomacy, studied firms were at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts from, e.g., US, Western Europe anc China. As our respondents note:

“We have no chance to compete with the Chinese, because the Chinese are followed by huge money, banks, the whole infrastructure and very aggressive activity of the Embassies and this political sphere.” [Alpha’ project manager].

Second, while respondents from the firms perceived the markets in question as attractive – due to their low levels of competition and rapid growth being enjoyed – there was an awareness of major shortfalls in knowledge regarding local culture, institutional regime, and geographic conditions, and the overall understanding of the market. As one of our respondents noted:

“You may order a detailed report on Africa from EY and pay a quarter million euro, but even if you read in this report that it’s 35 degrees, you will not feel how hot it is unless you go there.” [member of the Supervisory Board of Alpha].

Operating in a “strange land” of African markets, Polish firms were also complete “strangers” to their African partners, who did not recognise their brands, and typically had very limited knowledge of their home country:

“I guess that Poland is completely neutral, I think that they don’t even know where it is” [Alpha’s project manager].

Third, our interviewees note on the one hand that relationships are often more crucial in the SSA region than on other markets around the world. The feeling was that, while investors might be welcome, administration and business partners locally prefer to deal with individuals and businesses that receive support from their diplomats, banks and insurance companies. They also show a preference for partners perceived as familiar, even if that for example denotes firms from the old colonial power. That inevitably means outsider-status liability where Polish firms are concerned (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). As stated by our respondents:

“We must remember that despite the fact that colonies have not functioned in Africa since the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the structures, whether French, British or German, are very strong. Structures in the form of both diplomacy and local business, which of course was created there and continues to function as companies, let’s call it Rwandan, but Belgian at the moment. Let’s say with Belgian owners.” [CEO of Gamma].

“At the end of the day, even if Nigerians say that they do not like the English, when it comes to organizing conferences, they hire British companies, and when it comes to implementing projects, they take the British. Angolans, say that they’re fed up with Portugal, but the Portuguese are there everywhere, and if they need something, they hire Portuguese companies.” [member of Supervisory board of Alpha].

In summary, during the initial steps of internationalization into SSA, the studied firms encountered challenges related to their country of origin, foreignness, and outsider status. Some of these challenges are general, while others are more specific and intensified when compared to companies from other foreign countries. The general challenges stem from the limited international experience of Polish companies, a lack of knowledge about the complexities of local markets, and limited recognition of Polish companies by local stakeholders.

The more specific challenges emerge in comparison to other foreign entrants. Most corporations from the US and Western Europe possess greater resources, more established and recognized brands, and proven technologies. Chinese companies are also larger and benefit from strong financial backing from their home country. In short, these corporations have scale and scope advantages compared to Polish players. Companies from countries that were former colonial powers have the advantage of familiarity with local stakeholders, command of the language, and some understanding of institutional and cultural frameworks. Furthermore, both companies from Western countries and China receive stronger support from their home country diplomacy, institutions, and partners. Some even arrive in convoy formation – supported by commercial diplomacy, home country banks and insurance companies, suppliers, and complementors. In comparison, Polish companies operate as solitary entities with clear liabilities, needing to compensate for the lack of support and resources with additional efforts to gain legitimacy in the host countries.

4.2 Legitimacy-building Strategies

Our first surprising finding was related to the legitimising strategies CEE firms deploy in SSA. They tried to turn their weakneses into strenghts by leveraging organisational, home-country, and host-country contexts through specific narratives making reference to historical relationships and similarities between Poland and SSA. These narratives were aimed at building acceptance in a ‘legitimating environment’ (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999), of which host country state was the main legitimating actor. As explained by our informants:

“In African countries (…) we always talk to the state, it is always business to government” [CEO of Gamma].

“It is necessary, at least in our case, for the highest state authorities in these countries to approve what we’re doing. In Togo, for example, I went to the President of Togo several times asking and presenting what we are going to do, so that he finally says ‘good, I agree to it and I want it to happen here’. And then it only started to happen.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

Polish managers’ narratives dig deep and use several plots that create a mosaic of meanings. First, they depict Poland as a formerly colonised country, referring to the geographical partitioning out of existence that persisted from XVIIIth till XXth century. Second, they leverage communist times, during which the CEECs supported independence movements in the SSA region. Third, they use the more-recent story of Poland fighting bravely for its freedom, with Lech Wałęsa as its leader. Poland is then presented as a post-communist transformational success story that could serve as a role model for SSA, or at least a source of inspiration. Fourth, Polish managers stress that they understand well their SSA partners because the transformation period saw them on the receiving end of oppression or contempt on the part of the Western managers of MNEs investing in Poland during the 1990s. Polish managers thus stress how well they understand how it feels to be patronised by a “more-developed” business partner, and how that experience ensures they will not do the same by patronising SSA partners. Fifth, managers pursue narratives underlining the way in which Poland is a modest catching-up economy that differs from, say, China, in having neither the intention nor the resources to colonise SSA in economic terms. The latter fact is evidenced by Polish firms’ relatively small size and low-profile market entries. And, last but not least, companies stress tangible and intangible benefits of their actions for local partners and the host economy. All these micro-stories, narratives and actions have the common aim of limiting stakeholder tensions and developing the initial pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy that are described further in the following sections.

4.2.1 Pragmatic Legitimacy

The firms we studied stress several economic benefits they can extend to stakeholders in SSA. First, they bring value to the host country’s citizens by creating jobs and transferring knowledge and education. Specifically, all studied firms (except for Epsilon) offer student scholarships and internships in Poland (often to the children of host country elites), and later employ those involved in their operations in SSA. As one of our respondents recalls:

“We managed to build relations, even friendship with the Minister of Economy. I say the guy has potential, well, I will invite him, maybe his child would like to study in Poland. And in this way, over the last 4 years, we have attracted 5 students from Rwanda, but from certain backgrounds. This is rather a long-term view because if this young man returns to his country, he already comes from the establishment, which is relatively narrow (…) then we have our own man there, whom we or other Polish companies can use. [Alpha] and [Beta] also practice it.” [CEO of Gamma].

Another element of pragmatic legitimacy relates to offering direct benefits to important local stakeholders. In practical terms, this is done either by cultivating informal links with high-profile politicians or military top brass (though corruption is probably often involved, no business people openly admit to it) or through more formal arrangements, such as inviting them to join the company’s board or become consultants. As one of the managers doing business in Angola noted, he “doesn’t need partners; he needs patrons”.

All studied firms (again, except for Epsilon, a pure exporter), also enhanced their pragmatic legitimacy by opening production facilities, assembly plants, offices, or construction sites in SSA. As one respondent stated:

“[We] want to be present there for a longer period, to show them our commitment, [and] we also want to give them know-how by transferring skills. For those reasons, we decided to open an assembly plant there.” [head of Beta’s foreign trade office].

All studied firms also deliver reliable-enough products that are relatable in SSA and at low-enough prices but now as low as for example Chinese companiesFootnote 1. Subsequently, they leverage their communist legacy and the experience of Poland’s systemic transformation in the 1990s. Moreover, these firms promise to assist in modernizing the SSA economies, sometimes authenticating this promise by way of endorsements from respected individuals. For example, when company Beta decided to build an assembly plant for its agricultural machines in one SSA country, it was Dlamini Zuma, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, who opened this factory. This became a key event in future developments. She decided that these technologies and products were needed in Africa, as they are durable, cost-effective, and easy for users to maintain and repair. In this respect, these products are “good enough”, and much more appropriate for African farmers than expensive, technologically-advanced Western machinery. She was appointed an ambassador for the company, and her subsequent speeches mentioned, not only Poland as an example of a peaceful transition country, but also Beta’s factory and machinery as an example of Africa’s needs being met. She displayed Beta’s machinery in the African Union Congress and presented each African country’s President with such machinery to replace their standard equipment, such as hoes.

Pragmatic legitimacy was enhanced by convincing narratives. For example Epsilon, producer of military experience, stressed the good reputation of its products, and its flexibility:

“We built our professional narrative. We do not import from China. Our products are from Europe. We deliver to NATO, for missions, but also for military missions. We supply to Polish special forces – and this is great because they have a good reputation in the world. And we say that we are a medium-sized company, so we can customize the products to their needs and requirements. And that’s what we do.” [former CEO of Epsilon].

Another element of pragmatic legitimacy-building is the transfer of know-how, emphasized by all companies but Epsilon. As one of our respondents explained, based on an example of a project in Ethiopia:

“Here I come to another important thing, which we think is our attribute or something that we want to give to our partners in Africa, and that these big corporations like Microsoft, do not give. We offer them to work together and transfer know-how to them. And so it was there. There was a mixed team there. (…) This team worked partly in Poland and partly there. And so they changed their places. Some of our people there, some of those people here. In general, fifty-odd people from Ethiopia passed through Poland. They were here (…) they participated in this project and they learned how to develop this project further. And it was such a nice example, which they really appreciated, not only such a simple sale, but transferring knowledge there to them.” [member of supervisory board of Alpha].

The studied firms also enhanced their pragmatic legitimacy by stressing that they pose no economic threat to the host country’s stakeholders. Their limited size, low-commitment modes of entry (e.g. with a preference for trade- and transfer-related, rather than capital-related, forms), small-scale operations and limited home-country state support all combine to avoid evoking any impression of “economic colonisation”. Companies operating in ‘sensitive’ industries related to the country’s security (that is, Epsilon and, for some projects, Alpha), signaled the ‘non-threatening’ character of their entries to SSA by emphasizing the fact that Poland is not a world power, but a mid-size economy with no ‘imperialist’ ambitions. As one of our respondents explains:

“(…) in some particularly critical projects, for example, where we are doing such a very sensitive project for the state. It is an important element for them that Poland is not a world power, we do not have geopolitical ambitions here. From their point of view, we are safer than the United States, France or the United Kingdom, or even Turkey, let alone China. And many times, but it is in such more crucial things sensitive to the state, it matters.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

4.2.2 Moral Legitimacy

To bridge the gaps between home and host countries, managers of two companies (Beta and Gamma) reminded potential partners in SSA that communist regimes supported independence in SSA and maintained close, favourable relations with many African countries. One of the commonest arguments enriches the value of past relations and relates to the many Africans studying in the CEECs under the communist regimes. Many who did so later returned to their countries to become influential entrepreneurs, educators or decision-makers. For example included on the list are government ministers in Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Nigeria; and even one President of Mali and a Chairman of the Commission of the African Union.

There are also instances of a positive image for Poland being strengthened by reminding African partners of the former presence of qualified Polish expatriates working in SSA. For example, approximately 3000 Poles worked in Nigeria in the 1960s and 1970s; most of them engineers, doctors and university lecturers (Machowski et al., 2014). Moreover, communist countries’ close political ties and cost advantages led them to export both technologies and services to Africa back at that time. Polish FTOs and construction companies—such as Polimex, Kolmex, Budimex, Dromex and Elektromontaz, among others—built roads and factories in many African countries. It is not impossible to find certain local actors who retain fond memories of those times.

To combine pragmatic and moral legitimacy, all our interviewees reported invoking post-colonial sentiments. This is to say that all studied companies have made deliberate attempts, not only to distance themselves from the “imperialist forces” that firms from the formerly colonising countries are said to represent, but also to engage in the creative leveraging of post-colonial sentiment with a view to their own moral legitimacy to operate in SSA being enhanced.

This approach operates as emphasis is laid on the fact that Poland never colonised SSA, and has no intention of pursuing any “neo-colonial” expansion in the region. There is therefore an explicit and active process at work, in which firms distance themselves from other emerging-market multinational counterparts, most especially the Chinese corporations that have reconfigured the competitive landscape in the SSA region so profoundly (Alden, 2007; Yuan, 2017), and become the targets of ever-more vocal criticism (e.g., Bräutigam, 2011). Emphasised in this context are features distinct from those applying to many Chinese corporations, involving the absence of strong state support from Poland or close ties to its political elites; as well as the non-enjoyment of economic advantages deemed to result from scale, resources, the employment of Chinese labour and lower managerial costs. Thus, as our respondents noted quite specifically:

“We leverage the fact that the Africans are starting to be fed up with the Chinese, (…) [and] some people openly say that it’s a new form of colonialism, Chinese economic colonialism. They also notice that the benefits of Chinese investment to African countries are limited, because the Chinese come to Africa, exploit it, bring their own workforce, which by the way is perfectly understandable because this way is more effective for them than hiring local staff (…).” [Alpha’s Operational Director].

The “neo-colonial” resentments, leveraged in the narratives of Polish firms, relate not only to large, emerging-market corporation (such as Chinese MNEs), but also to American ones.

“We emphasized that our products (…) are European. This is very important, because Europe has good connotations in Africa. Nobody likes Americans very much, because they’re such a policeman of the world. We also emphasized that as Poland we are in NATO and that we take part in UN missions. This is important because they also participate in UN missions.” [former CEO of Epsilon].

The above quotation reveals the nuanced character of moral legitimization narratives. While the company emphasizes Poland’s connections to NATO, at the same time it distances itself from U.S., i.e., “a policeman of the world”.

Another unconventional way of leveraging post-colonial sentiments involves the emotional commonalities that the studied companies evoke in their narratives, with a view to bonding with local partners and achieving additional moral legitimacy. The most creative and surprising is a narrative related to the 19th century, throughout which Poland was absent from the map of Europe, having been partitioned out of existence between Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia:

“We search for commonalities in history, mainly during small talk. We talk about the partitions of Poland during the 18th century, [and] about the Second World War and German occupation. Initially, it is small talk, but later we develop stories. They also search for commonalities because they do not have brands or large companies. (…) But you cannot be too intrusive in order to develop really good relationships. In the West you need business references—what and to whom did you sell. In India and Africa [this] does not matter, [and only] relationships and local acceptance matter.” [Epsilon’s former CEO].

All respondent firms used this narrative as a “foot in the door” to make the country of origin look familiar, friendly, and similar in terms of history. As Alpha’s Operational Director explained: “We try to position ourselves on the same side of the wall.”

The companies studied keenly embrace the European “geography” and exploit the European brand, with all the transactional virtues involved, while firmly, if not ostensibly disassociating themselves from the European colonization (but also Chinese alleged neo-colonization) when it suits them and when they feel that partners are susceptible to such a narrativeFootnote 2. The latter entails a dose of flexibility and depends on the exact location, for instance Beta company did not employ this narrative in Ethiopia, which was not colonized by Europeans, but put it to some use in Zambia, where anti-colonial sentiments, at least in certain circles, are alive; Delta selling its products to Angola was also piggybacking on the anti-colonial struggle which ended only in 1975 and took advantage of the fact that Poland was actively supporting “anti-imperialist” movement at the time and beyond.

Narratives emphasising commonalities to the developmental trajectories of CEE and SSA also make frequent use of powerful symbols. For example, while very few people in the world can be compared to the towering African figure of Nelson Mandela, our respondents believe that Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s Solidarity and the symbol of the country’s transformation, is definitely one such person. As one respondent stated:

“[We] are perceived as an exemplary case of European change. There is obviously the symbol of Lech Wałęsa, [and] he is associated with Nelson Mandela, a freedom fighter. (…) And using this symbol in Africa was very helpful.” [Beta’s CEO].

Being on the “same side of the wall” has clear implications for relationships that CEE firms build with stakeholders in SSA. The relationships between developed countries’ MNEs and host-country stakeholders on emerging markets are often overshadowed by “corporate imperialism” (Prahalad & Lieberthal, 2003), and hence a superiority-inferiority dialectic. Our respondents are well-aware of this, having also experienced it back home. Specifically, Poland’s transition from a planned to a market economy was sometimes called a “crusade”, metaphorically, with Western “missionaries”, i.e. developed-country MNEs, bringing modern management practices and imposing a “one best way” of doing business upon locals (Jankowicz, 1994; Kostera, 1995). Polish firms entering Africa teach their employees to forget any feelings of superiority, and remind them of how Western expatriates treated the Poles in the early 1990s. Hence, they demonstrate a willingness to listen to and learn from locals, as one of our respondents indicated:

“These nations say they are proud nations, which I personally interpret as ‘they have an inferiority complex.’ (…) They are very sensitive when it comes to criticizing them, imposing one’s will. (…) We always said that we came here to learn, to listen, [and] to exchange experiences, and they really appreciated it.” [member of Alpha’s Supervisory Board].

4.2.3 Cognitive Legitimacy

The narratives and stories used by the firms we studied in SSA were instrumental in building cognitive legitimacy, as they allowed stakeholders in Africa to comprehend the firms they were dealing with (Suchman, 1995). The stories offer a stereotypical depiction of their protagonists, with colonisers (i.e. the Western world) and neo-colonisers (i.e. China) facing “the colonised” (i.e. both SSA and the CEECs). Polish firms have thus positioned themselves as a neutral third category compared to their competitors from developed countries, such as the United Kingdom or France, or such emerging markets as China. The difference between the moral and cognitive legitimization strategies is that the former is linked to the evaluation of company’s behaviour from the ethical point of view, stressing a ‘moral’ right to operate (e.g., gained by ‘doing no harm’ to the host countries in the past), the latter aims at building a clear positioning of the company, and thus reducing cognitive effort that stakeholders need to invest to ‘understand’ the company and make sense of its actions.

These narratives further stress how countries from SSA share important similarities with the CEECs, as both comprise proud nations that once fought for independence, cooperated under communism, and are experiencing rapid development currently. The only difference, then, is that the latter are slightly more advanced in their development trajectories. This, by the way, allows respondents to emphasize the major success that is the Polish transformation. As our respondent puts it:

“People in Africa notice that 25 years ago we were behind the Iron Curtain and today we are in the European Union. (…) We show them impressive statistics: the level of Polish exports in communist times, then in 2010, then currently—there is exponential growth, [and] that’s how our competitiveness has grown.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

“We transmit this positive story about Wałęsa, the fall of communism, fast growth, a transformational experience, and the fact that we understand their problems better than the French or the British, [and] they never had the same problems while we used to have just recently.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

“Africans liked to compare themselves to Polish in these countries, of course, exaggeratedly (…). We nodded to them and confirmed them in the belief that they were more or less in the same situation in which we were at the end of communism. So if we have succeeded in this way, we will also succeed. And they liked to get attached to it very much.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

In summary, our respondents’ narratives and stories accentuate similarities between CEE and SSA countries, with a view to Poland being depicted as an understanding business partner, and a role model that SSA countries may relate to, and in fact follow.

4.2.4 Context, Timing, Outcomes of Legitimacy-building Strategies

Our analysis reveals some firm-specific variations in narratives in legitimacy-building strategies (see Table 3). First, companies operating in “sensitive” industries (e.g., those linked to national security), were more eager to signal the “non-threatening” character of their entries, as part of their pragmatic legitimacy strategy. Second, companies that conducted operations in SSA (as opposed to pure exporters) signaled benefits linked to knowledge transfer. Third, in terms of moral legitimacy, companies that had links to SSA back in the communist times, emphasized the fact that Poland supported decolonization movements of SSA countries in the 60. and 70. The endeavors of Polish firms in Africa should be contextualized within a broader push for the recalibration of the world order, which has recently shifted with the expansion of BRICS, particularly with the inclusion of two African members (Ethiopia and Egypt). This new dynamic creates an additional space where Polish firms can seek to carve out a niche for themselves. As we have argued, Polish managers have actively articulated an anti-colonial bond with African countries, fostering a sense of being on the “right” side of history, which contributes to the concept of moral legitimacy.

Table 3 Legitimacy-building strategies of studied firms
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Interestingly, all studied companies (including “pure exporters”) used a mix of pragmatic, moral, and legitimization strategies. We believe that this is due to a highly demanding process of legitimizing entries to SSA in the eyes of the key stakeholder, that is, host country government. Strategies aimed at clearly positioning the firm (and its country of origin) in the mind of stakeholders (i.e., cognitive legitimization strategies), and gain for a firm a “moral right” to operate (i.e., moral legitimization strategies), were particularly useful at the very early stage of establishing contact and relationship building.

“In casual conversations over dinner, when we talk, they ask each other how this Poland. Let’s say, I have always tried to refer to such common elements somewhere, to create this platform for conversation and building relationships somewhere.” [Gamma’s CEO].

“We look for commonalities, especially in small-talks. We talk about partitions, invaders.(…) Poland, partition, history, it all appeared as a part of small-talk, which you need to manage to translate it to big talk”. [Former CEO of Epsilon]

Our studied companies began with narratives depicting them as entrepreneurial pioneers, with their country of origin becoming familiar (and appearing more friendly) due to these narratives drawing on historical similarities and former ties between the past and present of the home and host countries. This approach helps them navigate the tension between foreignness and familiarity and build elements of cognitive and moral legitimacy. Then, they added narratives differentiating their companies and countries of origin from those corporations originating in colonial countries, currently represented primarily by China, which enjoy economic power. Subsequently, these firms built common identities with local stakeholders and achieved a pragmatic legitimacy of being “good enough” while not dominating suppliers. Some of these narratives are fully-fledged stories (like the ones about the Polish partitions or the peaceful transformation), while others are micro-stories that put a positive spin on a firm’s intentions and actions, thus emphasizing a special, friendly aspect that renders the firm more acceptable and legitimate.

We did not observe host-country-specific differences in legitimizing strategies used by studied firms. This can partly be related to the characteristics of our sample, comprising companies taking their early steps in SSA. However, we can conclude that, at least at this stage, our sampled firms use largely “pan-African” legitimizing narratives, perhaps to reduce their own cognitive effort. As our respondents say:

“African studies scholars will emphasize differences, and I will argue about what these African countries have in common. If you go there and you are with them and stand above them, something is happening. When you leave, it stops happening. (…) So someone must be there to make sure that something happens. It doesn’t always have to be our representative, but it has to be someone who will be responsible for it.” [member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

Since our study investigates initial steps taken by Polish firms in SSA, we are unable to draw conclusions on the long-term performance outcomes of specific strategies. We do see that cognitive and moral strategies were instrumental in securing initial legitimacy, necessary to establish contacts with local stakeholders and enter the markets. However, based on the case of one of our sample firms (Beta), which went bankrupt a few years after entering Africa, we may hypothesize that pragmatic legitimization strategies that go beyond narratives (i.e., actual delivery of “good enough” products) is crucial for long-term performance. Moreover, our findings shed light on the “contagious” character of legitimacy. The bankruptcy of Beta posed a threat to legitimacy of other Polish firms in the region. As our respondent explains:

“I met with [COE of Beta] many times, I was even at the time when he signed this agreement first (…) in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, it bothers us a lot now, because this agreement is shown as something very bad. And Poland now has a very bad record in Ethiopia. (…) In Tanzania maybe to a lesser extent, but it is also visible somewhere. You have to be careful with that.” [Member of Supervisory Board of Alpha].

5 Discussion

We have been addressing the specific mechanisms by which foreign entrants’ cope with typical liabilities. The liabilities in question relate first to liability of origin (Ramachandran & Pant, 2010), which is home-country-specific. The liability of outsidership (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009) is in turn relevant to new entrants lacking network ties on the host-country market, which is the case for firms from post-transitional CEE economies. The latter companies are newcomers to global markets in general, and to SSA in particular, given their lack of colonial ties to the region. The liability of foreignness is in turn inherent in all firms entering foreign markets, though the specific legitimacy challenges brought about by this liability may vary by country of origin, industry, and firm (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999).

Our research reveals distinctive ways in which Polish firms have dealt with these liabilities. Liabilities of foreignness, origin and outsidership are responded to via highly-contextual processes shaped by both organisational characteristics and those relating to both home and host countries. The companies we studied engaged actively and deliberately in many initiatives conducive to the establishment of pragmatic, moral and cognitive types of legitimacy, thus enabling market entry (see Fig. 2). These types of mutually reinforcing strategies, neutralize major liabilities faced by Polish firms in SSA in the following way.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Legitimacy-building for foreign market entry

Source: authors’ own work

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First, the liability of origin is addressed by providing tangible benefits to host country stakeholders, and more specifically, offering “good enough” products, and seeking endorsement from local ambassadors to promote the price/quality ratio of their productsFootnote 3. The liability of origin, which entails, inter alia, poor support from the part of home country government, is further, neutralized by the fact that the limited scale of operations of studied firms poses no threat to local competitors and governments. Thus, studied companies mostly deploy pragmatic legitimacy to neutralize the liability of origin. Second, the liability of outsidership is addressed by narratives leveraging post-colonial sentiments, seeking commonalities between home and host country and narratives leveraging friendly relationships in the past. It is also neutralized by building new ties between home and host country, e.g., by offering internships in Poland, and later employing those involved in their subsidiaries in SSA. Thus, the liability of outsidership was addressed by a combination of moral and pragmatic legitimacy-building strategies. Third, the liability of foreignness, is neutralized by building cognitive legitimacy through identity claims and positioning vis-à-vis competitors. In effect, Polish firms become less of “strangers in a strange land”, adopting instead a more familiar look and feel, and becoming an understandable element of the market environment in the host countries.

The contextual conditions, in which the legitimisation process took place, therefore extend beyond firm-specific factors (such as the organisation’s history, resources and capabilities, and the characteristics of the team of top management) into specific factors relating to both home and host countries and for example involving countries’ development trajectories and diplomatic relationships; the foreign assistance one country grants to another; and public support for outward foreign direct investment (FDI). While an MNE’s home country is a powerful cognitive category that stakeholders use in their legitimacy judgments (Stevens & Newenham-Kahindi, 2017), we argue that the conditions providing for legitimising strategies result from the interactions among country- and firm-level factors. For example, the legitimisation of MNEs may be facilitated by diplomatic relationships with a host country, or the ties between political actors in the host and home countries.

Second, we conceptualise legitimacy-building actions as the deliberate effort MNEs make to achieve legitimacy (Palazzo & Scherer, 2006). Previous studies conducted in both the IB and domestic contexts (Brammer et al., 2009; Castello & Galang, 2014; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001; Tost, 2011) revealed as typical firms’ behaviours conformance with or manipulation of the institutional environment; the provision of tangible benefits to stakeholders; and the use of identity claims, endorsements, and other symbolic management practices. We found several similar legitimacy-building mechanisms, but primarily narratives and stories aimed at establishing moral and pragmatic legitimacy from the perspectives of stakeholders in SSA. Our studied companies began with narratives that depicted them as entrepreneurial pioneers, with their country of origin becoming familiar (and appearing more friendly) due to these narratives’ drawing on historical similarities and former ties between the past and present of the home and host countries. It helps them to navigate the tension between foreignness and familiarity, and build elements of cognitive and moral legitimacy. Then they added narratives differentiating their companies and countries of origin from those corporations originating in colonial countries enjoying economic power, as primarily now represented by China. Subsequently, these firms built common identities with local stakeholders, and a pragmatic legitimacy of being “good enough” while not dominating suppliers. Some of these narratives are fully-fledged stories (like the ones about the Polish partitions or the peaceful transformation), while some are micro-stories that put a positive spin on a firm’s intentions and actions, thus stressing a special, friendly aspect that leaves a firm looking more acceptable and legitimate.

Our findings have a number of theoretical implications. First, we argue that more attention should be paid to the specification of boundary conditions, i.e. the “who”, “where” and “when” of the liabilities arising out of foreignness, outsidership and origin. Specifically, these liabilities may be neutralised under some circumstances, and even be transformed into a “foreignness advantage”, “outsidership advantage” and “advantage of origin” (Nachum, 2010).

Moreover, we follow the work of Edman (2016) in arguing that MNEs may shape their identities in response to host-country conditions and legitimacy threats, as these either accentuate or attenuate their foreignness, outsider status and origin. For example, Polish firms in SSA are shown to accentuate their outsider status to leverage anti-colonial sentiments and emphasise how Poland never colonised the SSA region. We believe the same claim to be credible in the case of all firms hailing from the CEECs.

Third, it is typical for studies analysing the impacts on firms’ internationalisation that various distance dimensions exert to employ contemporary statistics, such as the Kogut-Singh index, based on Hofstede’s indices for cultural distance; as well as worldwide governance indicators in respect of institutional distance. Given our findings, we conclude that IB scholars should focus more on idiosyncratic, contextual and path-dependence similarities and differences between various countries, and not merely on the linear and one-dimensional distances. Such an emphasis would lead IB scholars to a better understanding of the interplay between conditions in home and host countries, and its impact on the strategies pursued by MNEs. Further, and following the view that “history matters” to IB (Jones & Khanna, 2006), we argue that home and host countries’ often arguably interconnected development trajectories exert a significant influence on the present-day legitimacy challenges and opportunities that MNEs face.

Fourth, in revealing how entrepreneurs leverage trajectories relating to the interconnected development of home and host countries, in order to legitimise their presence on foreign markets, this study addresses a recent call for research into “national, historical cultural and other social differences (…) as resources in the creation of international opportunities” (Mainela et al., 2014, p. 121). More generally, this study also highlights the role of post-communist legacies in IB, thus answering a recurring question as to how history matters in organisations’ behaviours internationally (Buckley, 2009; Jones & Khanna, 2006; Verbeke & Kano, 2015). While the stories or narratives of firms from particular post-communist CEEC economies, or other emerging economies, will differ, there might be distinctively effective practices that allow firms to build initial legitimacy by presenting themselves as familiar and friendly, and at the same time different (in a positive way) from either the MNEs originating in developed economies or the multinationals founded in the new economic superpowers like China or India.

This study has its implications for practitioners. We note how crucial it is for firms venturing into the SSA region to gain legitimacy in the host country; and we reveal several ways in which companies may pursue and achieve this goal through the creative deployment of historical legacy (Henisz & Zelner, 2005; Stevens et al., 2015). More specifically, we argue that the leveraging of post-colonial sentiments, post-communist legacies and transition-related experiences is likely to help CEE firms to establish legitimacy in SSA. However, we are far from claiming that all CEE firms should expand to distant markets – including SSA – or that public policies should support these efforts. The assumption underlying certain existing publicly-initiated programmes, such as the Polish government’s “Go Africa”, “Go China” and “Go Iran” ventures, is that the geographical diversification of trade and investment is beneficial for the economy per se, to the extent that firms should definitely be “going global”. It is typical for micro-level studies to offer only limited support for these claims, with indications that companies expanding within their home region outperform those of global reach (e.g., Rugman et al., 2008). As this study did not investigate the performance outcomes from infant multinational firms’ distant-market entries, we believe that this represents a promising area for further research.

Our findings are tempered by some limitations. Firstly, due to the limited scope of our firm sample, which focuses on only a few African countries, we have not been able to thoroughly address the continent’s heterogeneity and its diverse historical trajectories, including the varied legacies of colonization.

Secondly, and relatedly, while colonialism continues to hold significance in the national psyche across the region, the prominence of anti-colonial agendas has diminished, giving way to an emphasis on economic transformation and deeper integration (see AU, 2015). While this shift arguably underscores pragmatic legitimacy as the most influential, these governments are still subject to a complex interplay of all three legitimacies.

Thirdly, while this article primarily focuses on the narrative-building efforts of Polish firms to overcome their liabilities, we do recognize the presence of parallel strategies aimed at mitigating their distance from local markets that were beyond the scope of this paper. Among these, one strategy looms large and stands out for its particular significance in Africa: corruption in its various forms – from kickbacks to the utilization of political patronage (e.g., appointing former or current politicians to board positions).

Fourthly, Polish firms’ internationalisation in Africa is in its infancy, hence the confining of our sample to just five pioneering ventures, which enter SSA for market-seeking reasons. Our study’s time span is limited to firms’ initial steps onto the foreign market - specifically to their market entry, given its correspondence with the phase during which legitimacy judgments are formed. This means that we did not study the economic performance of those companies as we focused on the initial stage of their internationalization. We do know that they entered two or more SSA markets and continued their operations there during the period of our research, but we do not know how profitable these operations were. We anticipate that legitimacy, reduced political risk, and enhanced reputation may further translate into a legitimacy-based competitive advantage, which might be specific to both the firm and the home country. Moreover, it might provide a close connection to host-market characteristics, and in the case of Western MNEs, this would pose a particular threat to organizational legitimacy, or opportunities in the case of CEE multinationals. However, our paper does not address in any more specific way the stages of internationalization following market entry.

Fifthly, our focus was on the perspectives prevailing among corporate decision-makers – a circumstance that leads us to consider a promising area of further study that extends the sample to other CEE companies venturing into Africa. Possible future research could therefore investigate legitimacy spillover effects within the region (Stevens & Newenham-Kahindi, 2017), extend our study’s time span to cover the legitimacy-use phase (Tost, 2011), and include the perspectives of stakeholders in host countries.

Sixthly, as our focus was on Polish companies entering SSA markets, we did not study how corporations from other countries deal with the described challenges of legitimation. While we learned how studied corporate decision-makers perceive the liabilities of their companies in comparison to counterparts from other countries, we lack their perspective. We do not know if it is symmetrical or different. Therefore, a promising area for further study would be to extend the sample to include other companies venturing into Africa. Possible future research could investigate differences in legitimacy coping strategies among companies from different countries and regions, legitimacy spillover effects within the region (Stevens & Newenham-Kahindi, 2017), and extend our study’s time span to cover the legitimacy-use phase (Tost, 2011). Such cross-country comparisons would also involve the inclusion of perspectives from stakeholders in host countries.