Abstract: Decoupling from the institutional myth and reconstructing legitimacy are two central issues in organizational sociology studies as well as the main focus in the incubator development in science and technology in China. Existing research that emphasizes the functional feature of organizations themselves and the availability of social and cultural recourses, however, cannot explain well how Chinese university incubators can decouple from the institutional environment that has been called a “liner model” of innovation without any legitimacy imbalance. This study applied grounded theory analysis to a successful university incubator in Southern China and found that, when confronting the tremendous pressure from the myths of the institutional environment and experiencing failure to achieve the economic efficiency during the early stage, an organization had to first complete legitimation before formal institutional construction. The success of this incubator was primarily due to the achievement of the moral legitimacy for the existing alumni network that had already generated unique trust and then the establishment of the pragmaticlegitimacy by taking opportunities to get multiple projects effectively completed. Creating the image of the sole leader with charisma and advocating the obscure idea named “neither fish nor fowl” were the crucial sensemaking parts in the reconstruction process, which was in fact inevitably to recouple with a bigger and broader institutional field. In this sense, legitimacyrebuildingtook place both internally and externally. We confirmed that, in addition to the very important role of the charismatic leader in legitimacy mobilization as other studies on Chinese society had observed,  more attention should be given to other mediators, especially the nonhuman actors (actants), since not only can they block the pressure from the myths of the external institutional environment to just allow the needed legitimate resources filtered in but also provide freedom for actors to work creatively internally without the danger of defocusing. This is exactly what Scandinavian institutionalism is calling for research.

Key words: decoupling ,  , legitimacy ,  recoupling ,  university incubator , grounded theory