From a legitimacy perspective, this paper examines the relationship between the success or failure of a strategic action and it’s process arrangement based on the analysis of seven cases. We find that: (i)if a strategic action is illegitimate at the beginning or becomes illegitimate with the policy changes during the process of the implementation of the strategy, the process arrangement influences the results of the strategy; (ii)both the horizontal disassembly and vertical disassembly improve legitimacy, or (and) change the type of legitimacy demand, but the effects are different; (iii)for the private firms, the horizontal disassembly may be more appropriate to reduce the risk; (iv)for the stateowned firms, the horizontal disassembly can reduce the legitimacy risk but it is entirely possible to reduce the size of the project, but the vertical disassembly may result in a tieup of the firm with the government agency who is to support the strategic action. This paper also put forward some advices for management.