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Meet the Editorial Team

Pauline Alessandra

Lecturer at École polytechnique, Paris. Former Chief of Staff to the CEO of Air France and management consultant, she holds a PhD from the University of Montpellier. Her research examines legitimacy-maintenance strategies in contested organizations, focusing on the air transport industry and flight-shaming movements.

Julian Corj

PhD Student in Management at the University of Oxford, Saïd Business School. His research explores social evaluations and discourse in the context of emerging technology. In his dissertation, he applies qualitative and computational methods to trace the discursive legitimation dynamics surrounding the governance and regulation of Artificial Intelligence. One of his studies examines how new ventures legitimate the emerging category of AI assurance.

Sara Fontanet

PhD Student in Management at the University of St.Gallen. Her research lies at the intersection of management and moral philosophy. In her dissertation, she explores how organizational change agents utilize Aristotelian rhetoric to inspire bottom-up change and legitimize more human-centered business paradigms. One of her studies examines in depth how rhetoric influences the formation of individual legitimacy perceptions and judgments.

Patrick Haack

Professor of Strategy and Organization at HEC Lausanne. His research focuses on the conceptual and empirical study of legitimacy, a crucial antecedent of social and institutional change. In this context, he examines the dynamics of legitimacy in the areas of tax avoidance, anti-corruption, and responsible business.

Lionel Loiseau

DBA Student at the Business Science Institute and iaelyon School of Management, he has 40 years of professional experience across operational, managerial, and expert roles. Trained as a computer science engineer, he has also studied philosophy. His doctoral research examines how coaches construct professional legitimacy and, in particular, how practitioners seek, negotiate, and sustain legitimacy in a weakly institutionalized professional field. 

Sonia Siraz

Sonia Siraz is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organizations at emlyon Business School. Before academia, she founded a legal consultancy, encountering a puzzle still driving her research: what happens when legality and legitimacy diverge? She earned her PhD from IE Business School, was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, and studies how legitimacy evolves in contested environments, including minority entrepreneurship.