Challenges for academic organizations' legitimacy in Colombia's transition to a postconflict context
Journal of Organizational Change Management
ISSN: 0953-4814
Article publication date: 13 October 2020
Issue publication date: 2 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
We explore and explain how academic organizations attempt to establish legitimacy in a transition to a postconflict context, and we examine the ethical challenges that emerge from insightful approaches to formal education in such contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
We use legitimacy theory to present a case study of a business school in Medellin, Colombia (herein referred to by the pseudonym BS-MED) in the empirical setting of the end of the most prolonged armed conflict in the world.
Findings
We identify the mechanisms implemented by BS-MED to comply with the Colombian government's peace process and rhetoric of business profitability and the faculty members' initiatives in response to social and academic tensions.
Originality/value
This study identifies the sources of the tensions and discrepancies between the regulatory and pragmatic versus moral and cultural-cognitive criteria of legitimacy in transitions to a postconflict context. This examination advances our understanding of the challenges that organizations face regarding changes to legitimacy over time. The extreme setting of our case positions academics as key players who lead the search for legitimacy. This study challenges the understandings of legitimacy in the literature on organizations, which rarely consider broader sociopolitical transitions to a peace context.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are extremely grateful for the constructive guidance provided by the anonymous reviewer. An early version of this manuscript was presented at the Academy of International Business (AIB) Chapter Latin America & the Caribbean ‐Online Conference 2020. The authors Maribel Blasco and Matthew Archer for their helpful comments regarding earlier versions of this manuscript.
Citation
Ramirez, J. and Vélez‐Zapata, C. (2020), "Challenges for academic organizations' legitimacy in Colombia's transition to a postconflict context", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 1011-1028. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-01-2020-0027
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited