The painful legitimation process of a new identity in a professional service firm[Le processus douloureux de légitimation d’une nouvelle identité dans une entreprise de services professionnels]

To make an aspirational new organizational identity concrete, professional service firms (PSFs) must find ways to legitimate their new offerings. Using an inductive, longitudinal case study of an Australian intellectual property firm that aspires to become a strategic service provider, this study reveals that constructing a new identity forces the organization to engage in targeted, nuanced legitimating activities toward stakeholders, including both clients and the patent attorneys who are its owners and managing directors. The results establish a clear description of legitimacy dynamics and the interrelations of legitimacy and identity issues; provide evidence that organizational members can constrain professional organizations' efforts to make an aspirational identity concrete; and demonstrate theoretically that professional and individual legitimacies can link organizational identity aspirations with external legitimacy.