Background
New corporate leaders are often contested within their organizations and consequently strive for legitimacy. Drawing on legitimacy theory, we argue that new corporate leaders expect legitimacy gains from alignment in strategic leader interfaces (SLIs), which are social situations wherein leaders influence each other. While extant research has theorized on SLIs, it has adopted a unidirectional perspective, thus neglecting that executives navigate multiple interfaces simultaneously. We propose that interfaces differ in their relational nature and theorize about the relative importance of alignment in vertical (i.e., hierarchical relations) and horizontal (i.e., peer relations) interfaces for new corporate leaders’ legitimacy expectations and their consequential project pursuit.
Approach
Two decision-making experiments involving 880 decisions from 55 C-level executives and 1,728 decisions from 108 corporate leaders.
Project publications and presentations
Ademi, E. & Tumasjan, A. (2025). Strategic Interfaces and the Legitimacy of New C-Level Executives: An Experimental Study.* Accepted for presentation at the 45th Strategic Management Society Conference, San Francisco, USA.
*Nominated for the 2025 SMS Annual Conference Best Paper Prize.
Ademi, E. & Tumasjan, A. (2025). Strategic Interfaces and the Legitimacy of New C-Level Executives: An Experimental Study. Accepted for presentation at the 85th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Project member