Organizations require legitimacy to attract constituents' support Legitimacy, however, is always problematic. Thus, organizations frequently pursue legitimacy through a variety of substantive and symbolic practices. But legitimacy is a social judgment that is ultimately accorded the organization by its constituents. Organizations that pursue this judgement run the risk of “protesting too much”–of being perceived as precisely the opposite, manipulative and illegitimate. Such organizations include (1) the clumsy actor, perceived as unethical, heavy-handed, or insensitive, (2) the nervous actor, perceived as dogmatic, intolerant, or evasive, and (3) the overacting actor, perceived to overstate claims to legitimacy or overreact to faults. The analysis suggests that attempts to increase legitimacy may trigger a series of vicious circles which ultimately decrease legitimacy.

A 77-item Consulting Competence Survey was developed and tested for reliability and validity. During a six-month course designed to help members of a corporate quality staff develop organization development (OD) skills, 64 trainees were each assessed by two of their peers using this instrument. The trainees were also assessed by two trainers using a five-item trainer rating instrument. Two dependent measures-peer rating and trainer rating-were used to test hypotheses about the predictive validity of the eight Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) scales and the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) of ego development. Only the intuition scale of the MBT1 and the stage of ego development were found to predict consulting competence as rated by the subjects `peers and trainers. When these two measures were entered into the same structural equation, only stage of ego development was found to remain a significant, positive predictor. The study's implications for research and for selecting and training OD consultants are discussed.

Two samples of managers are used to demonstrate that environmental and technological variables affect the frequency of managerial roles as defined by Mint&erg (1973). Environmental complexity increases the frequency of informational roles while complexity and dynamism increase the frequency of decisional roles. The interpersonal roles are predicted by an interaction between complexity and dynamism. Overall routineness decreases the frequency of all roles. The presence of rules increases the frequency of decisional and interpersonal roles. The findings suggest that environmental dimensions and technology need to be taken into account in future research and future theories of managerial work.

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