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Seeking Strategic Coherence - Balancing Internal and External Legitimacy in Pluralistic Settings
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
01 June 2012
End Date
31 May 2014
Status
ongoing
Keywords
Strategic management
legitimacy
identity
Description
Within an through strategic practices, organizations (whether for-profit, non-profit or public) strive for legitimacy of their goals and actions, both internally vis-à-vis employees and internal stakeholders as well as externally with respect to external stakeholders and the wider society. Thus, if we are to understand strategy as social practice, we need to develop a subtler understanding of these internal and external legitmation processes.
In order to account for and in defining an organization's aspiration to balance internal and external legitimacy, we offer the notion of strategic coherence. Strategic coherence (as intended outcome of strategy formation) refers to an ideal, hard to attain balance between internal and external legitimacy. Further, we suggest legitimation as the discursive processes organization's engage in when seeking internal and external legitimacy. In particular, we posit that internal and external legitimation processes are central to organizational strategy work. The content or object of these legitimation processes seems mainly to be an organiziation's identity. Internally, competing organizational identity claims are negotiated in order to be 'validated' by internal stakeholders. Externally, a validated organizational identity claim is advocated in order to be 'accredited' by an organization's environment. Lastly, we suggest that accomplishing strategic coherence is more challenging in pluralistic organizations.
Our research project aims to further recent advancements in the study of competitive advantage that take a social constructivist orientation - a perspective that suggests competitive success may involve achieving a balance of the external expectations that are held within a firm's external environment and of those internal expectations that are held within a firm's internal environment. In this respect, we offer of the concept of strategic coherence and explore processes of how organizations aim at seeking a balance between managing internal and external legitimacy. Then, we wish also to contribute to institutional theory and to research on legitimacy by exploring how organizations actually reconcile external representation and internal workings. Lastly, our focus also furthers prior research on how organizations aim to establish external legitimacy and to acquire resources from external resource-holders by elaborating on the internal dynamics through which multiple groups of actors may aim to mobilize their own interests in the construction and reconstruction of those basic images through which organizations present themselves to others.
In order to account for and in defining an organization's aspiration to balance internal and external legitimacy, we offer the notion of strategic coherence. Strategic coherence (as intended outcome of strategy formation) refers to an ideal, hard to attain balance between internal and external legitimacy. Further, we suggest legitimation as the discursive processes organization's engage in when seeking internal and external legitimacy. In particular, we posit that internal and external legitimation processes are central to organizational strategy work. The content or object of these legitimation processes seems mainly to be an organiziation's identity. Internally, competing organizational identity claims are negotiated in order to be 'validated' by internal stakeholders. Externally, a validated organizational identity claim is advocated in order to be 'accredited' by an organization's environment. Lastly, we suggest that accomplishing strategic coherence is more challenging in pluralistic organizations.
Our research project aims to further recent advancements in the study of competitive advantage that take a social constructivist orientation - a perspective that suggests competitive success may involve achieving a balance of the external expectations that are held within a firm's external environment and of those internal expectations that are held within a firm's internal environment. In this respect, we offer of the concept of strategic coherence and explore processes of how organizations aim at seeking a balance between managing internal and external legitimacy. Then, we wish also to contribute to institutional theory and to research on legitimacy by exploring how organizations actually reconcile external representation and internal workings. Lastly, our focus also furthers prior research on how organizations aim to establish external legitimacy and to acquire resources from external resource-holders by elaborating on the internal dynamics through which multiple groups of actors may aim to mobilize their own interests in the construction and reconstruction of those basic images through which organizations present themselves to others.
Leader contributor(s)
Member contributor(s)
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
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Method(s)
.
Notes
Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship
Range
Institute/School
Range (De)
Institut/School
Division(s)
Eprints ID
205352
6 results
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1 - 6 of 6
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationSeeking strategic coherence : Balancing internal and external legitimacy in pluralistic settings(EGOS European Group for Organizational STudies, 2012-07-06)Type: conference paper
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PublicationType: conference paperVolume: Session Paper 1030
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PublicationType: journal articleJournal: Academy of Management Best Paper ProceedingsVolume: 2013Issue: 1
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PublicationDiagnosing Organizational Identity Beliefs by Eliciting Complex, Multi-Modal MetaphorsThe purpose of this article is to extend the organizational development diagnostics repertoire by advancing an approach that surfaces organizational identity beliefs through the elicitation of complex, multimodal metaphors by organizational members. We illustrate the use of such "Type IV" metaphors in a postmerger context, in which individuals sought to make sense of the implications of the merger process for the identity of their organization. This approach contributes to both constructive and discursive new organizational development approaches; and offers a multimodal way of researching organizational identity that goes beyond the dominant, mainly textual modality.Type: journal articleJournal: Journal of Applied Behavioral ScienceVolume: 49Issue: 4
Scopus© Citations 17 -
PublicationAnticipating intended users - Prospective sensemaking in technology developmentHow do developers and designers of a new technology make sense of intended users? The critical groundwork for user-centred technology development begins not by involving actual users' exposure to the technological artefact but much earlier, with designers' and developers' vision of future users. Thus, anticipating intended users is critical to technology uptake. We conceptualise the anticipation of intended users as a form of prospective sensemaking in technology development. Employing a narrative analytical approach and drawing on four key communities in the development of Grid computing, we reconstruct how each community anticipated the intended Grid user. Based on our findings, we conceptualise user anticipation in Terms of two key dimensions, namely the intended possibility to inscribe user needs into the technological artefact as well as the intended scope of the application domain. In turn, these dimensions allow us to develop an initial typology of intended user concepts that in turn might provide a key building block towards a generic typology of intended users.Type: journal articleJournal: Technology Analysis & Strategic ManagementVolume: 25Issue: 9
Scopus© Citations 10