Abstract: Taking the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Co., this study investigates the periodic characteristics of multinational enterprises’ overseas legitimation and the evolutional relationship among key factors that promote the legitimation process. Several research findings are as follows: First, the overseas legitimation evolves a sequential characteristic from pragmatic legitimation to normative legitimation and cognitive legitimation. It is an inevitable choice for enterprises from emerging markets to achieve legitimation is from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, the international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as the facilitators of legitimation, are accompanied with prominent evolutional characteristics. The evolutional traits of international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration correspondingly evolve from passive adaptation to active creation. Third, the adaptation and interactive relationship among the international network linkage, resource system reconfiguration and overseas legitimation are sorted out.