ABSTRACT
The social context that was relevant to their legal understandings included elements from both the national and the organizational contexts. In implementing sexual harassment law, managers employing the Risk Management template shift substance of the law from anti-discrimination to one of organizational context. The Austrian national context provides two competing accounts of sexual harassment, but only one was reflected in the perceptions of managers employing the Legitimacy Challenge template. The consequence of the Risk Management template is that sexual harassment law can be used as an aspect of organizational control. Just as Alpen’s CEO challenged the legitimacy and relevance of sexual harassment law, managers at Gulf Stream similarly adopted the Legitimacy Challenge template. The rejection of the issue of sexual harassment in firms adopting the Legitimacy Challenge template is unfettered by concerns about the organizational consequences of a sexual harassment lawsuit, either financial or in terms of employee morale.
