Middle managers at the crossroads: Navigating legitimacy tensions in pursuit of radical innovation in nascent ecosystems

S. James Ellis, Saeed Khanagha, Rick Aalbers and Philipp Tuertscher

Research Policy, 2025, vol. 54, issue 8

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Collaborative innovation; Digital innovation ecosystem; Middle managers; Legitimacy-seeking behavior; Radical innovation; Legitimacy tensions; Case study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733325001167
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:54:y:2025:i:8:s0048733325001167

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105287

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by Anna Bergek, PhD, Alex Coad, PhD, Maryann Feldman, Elisa Giuliani, Adam B. Jaffe, Martin Kenney, Keun Lee, PhD, Ben Martin, MA, MSc, Kazuyuki Motohashi, Paul Nightingale, Ammon Salter, Maria Savona, Reinhilde Veugelers and John Walsh

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().