Many organizations adopt an open strategy to broaden participation, yet struggle to convert expanded participation into sustained strategic influence. Recent research has advanced understanding of why open strategy concentrates influence despite formal inclusiveness, but has not yet specified the governance mechanisms through which these dynamics can be actively managed. This paper aims to ask: how do organizational actors govern strategic legitimacy across micro-role transitions in open strategy, and what consequences does this have for whether participation translates into sustained strategic influence?
Drawing on legitimacy theory, role exit theory and strategy-as-practice research, the paper develops a process framework that conceptualizes micro-role transitions in open strategy as governed by a recursive strategic legitimacy cycle comprising three mechanisms: authorization, validation and withdrawal.
Strategic influence in open strategy is determined not by participation volume but by how legitimacy is governed across repeated micro-role transitions. When authorization is explicit, validation is transparent, and withdrawal is constructive, legitimacy accumulates, and open strategy delivers sustained influence. When these mechanisms are misaligned, legitimacy depletes faster than it is replenished, producing the plateau pattern documented across open strategy research. Governance effectiveness varies across organizational hierarchy, episode length, platform modality and cultural context.
This paper shifts open strategy research from participation breadth to legitimacy governance as the mechanism linking inclusion to influence. It suggests that future research should examine how authorization, validation and withdrawal operate across repeated strategy episodes, actor groups and organizational contexts. The framework also invites multilevel studies connecting micro-role transitions to macro patterns of influence concentration, participation fatigue and strategic durability. By treating strategic legitimacy as renewable yet exhaustible, the paper opens new avenues for theorizing how governance design shapes whether openness becomes institutionalized or remains episodic and symbolic.
Effective open strategy requires differentiated governance across three actor groups: senior leaders as legitimacy grantors who govern scope, sponsorship and narrative closure; middle managers as legitimacy advocates who support peers whose contributions may not reach senior audiences; and strategy facilitators as legitimacy brokers who design structurally equitable authorization, validation and withdrawal processes.
This paper extends discursive accounts of open strategy, the subject-position struggle perspective, and the micro-role transition performance perspective by specifying the organizational governance mechanisms through which these dynamics are enacted and managed. It reframes open strategy as a legitimacy management challenge and conceptualizes strategic legitimacy as a renewable yet exhaustible organizational resource that must be actively governed.
