Another milestone from the FINDER project—a fresh publication in the FT50-listed journal Research Policy, highlighting the caliber and impact of research emerging from our program.
The article, titled “Middle managers at the crossroads: Navigating legitimacy tensions in pursuit of radical innovation in nascent ecosystems”, is based on the Atos Case, a central pillar in the FINDER Fintech scoping, and is coauthored by FINDER’s recent PhD graduate Dr. James Ellis, alongside Saeed Khanagha, Rick Aalbers, and Philipp Tuertscher, all FINDER academic supervising crew.
What’s it about?
This longitudinal case study dives deep into the role of middle managers as strategic orchestrators in digital innovation ecosystems. Using a rich case from Atos, the authors unravel how these managers navigate the legitimacy tensions between internal organizational expectations and external ecosystem demands—particularly while working with fintech startups to drive radical innovation.
At the core of the study:
How can a legacy IT services giant like Atos become a central orchestrator in the fintech space? The authors trace how middle managers within Atos sought to reposition the firm—not just as a service integrator in banking, but as a hub connecting fintech start-ups and financial institutions to co-create radical, collaborative innovations.
Through a rich longitudinal field study, the paper examines the strategic communication and action patterns managers used to gain trust and alignment within a nascent and high-stakes ecosystem. It highlights how discursive and performative actions help managers continuously adapt their strategies to evolving stakeholder landscapes, offering new insight into the messy, dynamic, and high-stakes world of collaborative innovation.
Why this matters:
- Sheds light on the strategic agency of middle managers in uncertain environments
- Offers a framework for understanding legitimacy-seeking behavior over time
- Bridges firm-level and ecosystem-level adaptation under fintech dynamics
- Reinforces FINDER’s mission of exploring future-oriented, digital innovation in practice
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2025.105287
With that, this publication stands as a testament to the impact and relevance of the ongoing FINDER research and as FINDER crew we couldn’t be prouder of James and the coauthoring team for pushing the boundaries of management scholarship. More to come!
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