This paper is a study that analyses the subject after establishing legitimacy. The existing research has not clarified the issues after establishing legitimacy. In order to clarify this issue, a comparative case analysis is conducted. The cases are two plating companies targeting subsidies of SMEs where legitimacy issues are particularly evident. First, we found that it is difficult to make flexible transformation of the plan after establishing legitimacy. Second, in order to overcome this difficulty, it is necessary to set a target with a wide range, and continue to search the customer need.

This paper reviews Zahra and George (2002) which is one of the representative paper concerning absorptive capacity (ACAP) research. Zahra and George proposed four dimensions of ACAP and offered a reconceptualization of this construct. Some of their propositions are substantiated in subsequent studies, while some studies have extended their work by empirical researches as explained below.