The heightened contributory partnership phenomenon: Legitimacy-seeking goals and behaviors within ROTC

Intra-organizational relationships have become common in higher education. Scholars have offered limited knowledge about the ways in which ancillary organizations pursue and maintain intra-organizational relationships in higher education. Notably, the literature provides no examination of their legitimacy-seeking efforts. Based on data collected from program visits of 151 Army ROTC programs on college campuses, we analyzed legitimizing behaviors through the neo-institutionalist perspective of professional legitimacy to identify the substantive nature of intra-organizational relationships. We drew on Husserl’s constitutive phenomenology to uncover the process and manner in which legitimacy-seeking among ancillary organizations within postsecondary intra-organizational relationships took place. The findings demonstrate a heightened set of efforts expected for ROTC legitimation on college campuses, which we have called the Heightened Contributory Partnership phenomenon. This phenomenon represents an interconnected approach to legitimacy seeking which may be used to understand the legitimation of other ancillary organizations as well, and offers legitimacy seeking constructs, which are open for future testing and refinement through further research.