Rebel or Outlaw? Shared Leadership in a Filmmaking Company

How can organizations innovate and break with conventions without losing their legitimacy? Organizing for legitimacy (serving tradition and convention) often contrasts organizing for innovation and is often perceived a choice between two evils. This paper suggests that leaders can reconcile the legitimacy-innovation tension by combining and addressing them as two complimentary processes. An ethnographic case study depicts how shared leadership in a highly successful filmmaking company, confronts the legitimacy-innovation tension and, based on a combination of ‘out-of-fashion’ and contra-intuitive actions, their search for new solutions makes them balance between being a rebel or an outlaw.