From Support to Mutiny: Shifting Legitimacy Judgments and Emotional Reactions Impacting the Implementation of Radical Change

Based on a three-year inductive study of one organization's implementation of radical organizational change, we examine the critical role played by middle managers' judgments of the legitimacy of their top managers as change agents. Our analysis revealed middle managers' shifting judgments of the change agents' legitimacy that arose with their emotional reactions and produced rising resistance to the change effort. Our inductive model...