Managing Legitimacy

This paper revisits the notion of "liability of newness" to examine how a new organization, ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), has managed to outlive in lack of initial support from its multiple stakeholder groups. Since its inception, ICANN has been deemed the most controversial organization in the Internet community. From the notion of liability of newness, ICANN should have disappeared at its early stage. However, ICANN has stabilized over time, growing its influence over the Internet community. ICANN is an exceptional phenomenon to the notion of liability of newness. This paper attempts to investigate how ICANN has successfully dealt with the problem of liability of newness, identifying contributing factors and conditions that help ICANN to survive in the midst of controversy and criticism from the broader Internet community.