In Search of Legitimacy: Organizational Change Management as a Process of Legitimacy
Building on a case study that focuses on the deployment of a new organizational unit within the Canadian Air Forces, this article investigates organizational change management as a legitimation process. The results of the case study provide evidence that, on the one hand, change management relies on four legitimization strategies : testing of the new organizational unit, education and training of change agents, alteration of managerial rules and enlargement of the new unit’s activities. On the other hand, the results suggest that the legitimation process is made up with four phases : construction, sustainability, deepening and development of legitimacy.