Abstract: The loss of cognitive legitimacy signifies an organization’s failure to be recognized by stakeholders such as customers, which constitutes a critical strategic issue. This requires rebuilding cognitive legitimacy by adjusting strategic positioning and other means to align with customer preferences. The process involves transformations in various organizational models and actions, achieved through the coordination of numerous conflicting relationships, which entails resolving multiple paradoxical equilibrium issues. Given this, this study adopts the paradoxical equilibrium as a theoretical lens and employs a single-case study approach to explore how organizations reconstruct cognitive legitimacy through strategic change processes. Research reveals that the reconstruction of cognitive legitimacy based on strategic change processes unfolds in three stages: cognitive legitimacy deficit, internal organizational construction of cognitive legitimacy, and external consensus-building of cognitive legitimacy. This involves four critical steps: identifying cognitive legitimacy deficits, establishing new legitimacy thresholds, crossing new legitimacy thresholds, and promoting new legitimacy thresholds; The four steps are based on the successive triggering relationship between the paradox of “profit-responsibility”, the paradox of “exploration-exploitation” and the paradox of “competition-cooperation”, whereby the succession is realized through the change of state “hidden-highlighted-hidden again”; Emerging demands propel paradoxes from latent to manifest states, revealing developmental challenges that organizations must address. Paradox’s transition back from manifest to latent states signifies the resolution of corresponding developmental issues-primarily achieved through paradox equilibrium strategies such as integration, spatial separation, and operational separation.

Key words: paradoxical equilibrium, cognitive legitimacy, legitimacy threshold crossing, strategic change, case study