MAINTAINING LEADERSHIP LEGITIMACY IN THE TRANSITION TO NEW ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS

Numerous new organizational forms have been proposed for ensuring the continuous strategic renewal of a firm. In essence, these forms are di stinguished by: (I) their emphasis on bottom-up entrepreneurship, and (2) their reliance on a cooperative network that allows these entrepre neurial units to share their competencies with one another. One of the key behaviours required for the success of such an organization is em ployee empowerment. We argue in this paper that the legitimacy of corp orate leadership during the restructuring of a traditional bureaucrati c organization is crucial to its eventual transformation to one of the new organizational forms. The current wisdom of a two-stage transform ation process, where an authoritarian restructuring precedes the more participative revitalization, is thus challenged. The transformation m ay get stalled after the restructuring stage because of top management 's inability to empower the firm's employees at will, having lost thei r trust during restructuring.