How Change Recipients Become Rivals: Legitimacy Dynamics and ‘Cooptive Rejection’ in Organizational Change

Our study challenges a commonly held assumption in the legitimacy and organizational change literatures: that the legitimacy of a change project is closely tied to, and dependent upon, the legitimacy of the change agent promoting it. Drawing on an in‐depth, three‐and‐a‐half‐year qualitative study of a major transformation within a French public organization, we identify a surprising dynamic – instances where a change initiative gains support and is judged as legitimate even as the legitimacy of the change agent deteriorates. To explain this dissociation, we develop a theory of cooptive rejection, a process through which change recipients appropriate and endorse the content of a change while actively distancing themselves from, or even undermining, its initiator. We unpack the mechanisms that enable this dissociation and highlight the crucial role of recipient agency. Our research contributes to legitimacy theory by revealing how multiple objects of legitimacy can evolve independently – and even in opposition – over time. We also advance organizational change scholarship by illuminating the competitive nature of transformation processes.