Abstract
PurposeUnderpinned by institutional legitimacy, this study explores how South African public university senior managers struggled to maintain legitimacy during an unplanned radical change process.Design/methodology/approachGioia's grounded theory analysis approach is employed to analyse interviews with 37 senior managers of public-funded universities in South Africa.FindingsThis study's findings show that a change without proper planning severely damages institutions in all aspects of leadership's normative, empirical, moral and pragmatic legitimacy.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the literature on legitimacy by illustrating the importance of institutional legitimacy during unplanned social change and the factors that negate legitimacy.Originality/valueThough other legitimacy models have been well developed, they do not apply to such unplanned social change in organisations. This study shows a different angle of the legitimacy crisis under unplanned social change conditions.
Subject
Management of Technology and Innovation,Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management,Strategy and Management,General Decision Sciences
Reference39 articles.
1. The pace, sequence, and linearity of radical change;Academy of Management Journal,2004
2. Increasing dispositional legitimacy: progressive legitimation dynamics in a trajectory of settlements;Academy of Management Journal,2021
3. Toward a theory of social judgments of organisations: the case of legitimacy, reputation, and status;Academy of Management Review,2011
4. The ‘macro’ and the ‘micro’ of legitimacy: toward a multilevel theory of the legitimacy process;Academy of Management Review,2015