Middle managers at the crossroads: Navigating legitimacy tensions in pursuit of radical innovation in nascent ecosystems
通过对IT公司Atos的纵向实地研究，探讨中层管理者如何平衡内外部利益相关者的冲突期望，调整合法性寻求行为以推动激进创新。
To pursue radical innovation in emergent digital ecosystems, middle managers need to balance the often conflicting expectations and interests of internal and external stakeholders. Our longitudinal field study of Atos, a leading IT company, follows a team of middle managers aiming to collaborate with novel financial technology firms—so-called fintechs—to catalyze radical innovation. We explore how they navigated contradictory legitimacy issues arising from stakeholders both internal and external to the firm. In doing so, we outline how they adopted and adjusted a changing mix of legitimacy-seeking behavior over time to generate and sustain an array of radical innovations. Our findings show how legitimacy issues continuously evolve as middle managers embed their innovation efforts, driven by shifting stakeholder expectations, leading them to adjust their legitimacy-seeking approach. We contribute to the literature on collaborative innovation ecosystem strategies, emphasizing the central role of middle managers in connecting the internal organizational stakeholders to external ecosystem actors.