Implementation of innovations and legitimacy judgments in Haute Cuisine from the Michelin-starred chefs’ perspective

Today, Haute Cuisine chefs not only create dishes but also initiate and lead cuisine movements and contribute to social systems with their innovative actions. Using an alternative theoretical lens (legitimacy-as-perception) to elaborate on the socio-cognitive aspects of innovations in the Haute Cuisine context might be helpful as it explains the mechanism considering cross-level legitimacy judgments. Thus, the aim of this paper is to elaborate on how the implementation of innovations change individual legitimacy judgments and behaviors (RQ1) and contribute to the aggregation of macro-level legitimacy judgments (RQ2). This study builds a theoretical model by identifying examples via 20 interviews with Michelin-starred chefs. Our theoretical model presents two main dimensions, reinterpretation and dining experience , and five underlying mechanisms, recombination, differentiation of the traditional concept, transformation of reputation, execution of soft innovation, and focusing on multidimensionality , that provide an extensive rationale for micro and macro-level associations. • The findings of this paper are based on 20 interviews with Michelin-starred chefs in cuisine hubs in the USA and the Nordic countries. • This study builds a theoretical model by interviews with chefs who are drivers of innovations as individuals, and changes in their legitimacy judgments and actions cause them to drive innovations. • The proposed theoretical model explains changes in individuals’ perceptions and actions and how these individual behaviors aggregate to the collective level and consists of two main dimensions: reinterpretation (micro level) and dining experience (collective level). • This article contributes to legitimacy-as-perception theory by providing empirical data from the Haute Cuisine context. Also, it joins the discussions that consider Haute Cuisine to be one of the branches of expanding creative industries.