The Dynamicity of Legitimacy and Sensemaking by Top Management and Consultants During Complex Change

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We examine how organizational consultants shape the change process in a large-scale and complex organizational change and establish legitimacy by studying a longitudinal change process in a large automotive company in India. We study legitimacy tactics used by the consultants, the implementation team and change sponsors from the perspective of institutional theory and understand the temporal dynamics of the tactics as used by these actors. We show that the consultants and the implementation team often operate with a single identity during the change process and study the loss and repair of legitimacy during the change process.