Power, Authority and Legitimacy

The paper illustrates how the process by which things are attributed legitimacy is rendered problematic by structures of dominancy embedded in organization social systems: legitimacy is framed by power and discourse. The paper advances understanding of the relation between power, rationality and legitimacy by showing how structures of domination recursively constitute, and are constituted by, legitimacy. How these relations prevented a police organization from changing – breaking the recursive patterns of domination and legitimization – is empirically illustrated. The paper introduces the theoretical framework and the methodology employed, it reports the findings of the empirical research and concludes by discussing the findings, elaborating on a future research agenda and developing some implications of the study for organizational practice.