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Despite leadership being considered essential to successful organizational change, reviews of empirical research on the subject reveal inconsistencies in the approaches to, and measurements of, bot...

We have been working together as husband and wife, as management professor and management consultant, and as coauthors for over 30 years. During that time, we have tailored an operations research–based approach to represent the functional infrastructure of organizations as networks of agreements for the transfer of deliverables, e.g., products, services, and communications, which connect internal organizational units and also their external relations. The network model is useful to understand organizations, support organization change, and develop management practices that improve efficiency, teamwork, and effectiveness. Throughout the application of this approach, we have observed often that “management is missing,” in organizations in general and in organization change management in particular, where managers and change agents may underestimate or fail to recognize the productive relationships at the foundation of performance in organizations, that these relationships are different from authority or social/affinity relationships, and that they require management. In this chapter, we distinguish the network approach that is fundamental to our work and the “missing” elements of management that are recognizable by using that approach. We then examine how “management is missing” in change management and how it might be restored.

The scholarship of both organizational change and leadership is extensive. However, there have been few attempts to systematically integrate these fields of research in terms of theory or empirical...

Welcome to a new year with Journal of Change Management. The journey of creating the world's leading Journal on organizational change continues, and 2016 looks to become another exciting year follo...

Resistance can be a valuable resource in the accomplishment of change. Accessing its benefits, however, requires a shift in managers’ tendency to blame resistance for the failure of change. This may be difficult, because over half of all organizational changes fail and, according to the managers involved, the primary reason for those failures is resistance to change. So why stop blaming resistance as a hindrance, and start using it as a resource for achieving change? There are three reasons. First, blaming resistance can be dysfunctional for managers who perceive resistance as threatening. These managers may become competitive, defensive, and uncommunicative, more concerned about being right, looking good (or not looking bad), and winning (having their way) than about accomplishing the change. As a result, they may alienate potential partners in accomplishing change by relating to them as obstacles rather than resources. Responding negatively to resistance behavior can cost good will and valuable relationships as well as the opportunity to learn how to improve change implementation. Second, blaming other people for their apparent resistance behaviors is inaccurate in that it presumes resistance is a unilateral phenomenon. Resistance is at least partially dependent on the behaviors of change managers themselves. It is inaccurate and simplistic to view resistance as coming only from ‘‘over there, in them,’’ in the attitudes (and thinking), behaviors, and communications of the individuals and groups who are asked to make changes. This gives us the view that only ‘‘they,’’ those resisters, must alter their behaviors, and that the change would succeed if not for the irrational and self-serving actions of people who seem to be blocking or deflecting the change. Seeing resistance as solely ‘‘over there’’ is to see only one side of what must be a two sided story, and obviates it as a possible contribution to defining and implementing a proposed change. Finally, blaming resistance is incomplete because it ignores the functional value of resistance. Managers who consider resistance as negative and dysfunctional believe it increases the amount of work required, hinders progress, and serves the narrow self-interests of those resisting. This purely negative view of resistance is not found in other fields of study, e.g., mechanics, biology, and electronics, where resistance is an operational factor. In those fields, resistance is inherently neutral and only takes on a value of ‘‘functional’’ (e.g., in space heaters) or ‘‘dysfunctional’’ (e.g., excessive air drag) depending on what one is trying to accomplish. As a result, people in those fields are ambidextrous in working with resistance, capable of seeing it as both an asset and a liability. A more complete and balanced view of resistance can provide more flexibility in the field of managing change. While it seems to be the consensus approach, blaming resistance robs managers of a powerful lever in the conduct of change. Resistance is feedback, and like all feedback, it may be useful for improving the design and implementation of the process in question. By understanding our inclination to dismiss certain behaviors as resistance, we can learn to listen in a new way to the opportunities those behaviors provide for a successful change. The purpose of this article is twofold. The first is to provide an understanding of why managers blame resistance and support a greater awareness of the factors influencing their perceptions and actions regarding resistance. The second is to identify specific ways in which resistance can be a positive contribution to the successful accomplishment of change.

Prevailing views of resistance to change tell a one-sided story that favors change agents by proposing that resistance is an irrational and dysfunctional reaction located “over there” in change recipients. We tell the rest of the story by proposing that change agents contribute to the occurrence of resistance through their own actions and inactions and that resistance can be a resource for change. We conclude by proposing how resistance might be restructured.

Vision has been traditionally regarded as an asset to the success of organizational change. However, based on the results of a case study, Landau, Drori, and Porras propose that vision may also be a hindrance to the change process. The authors disagree. The authors contend that Landau et al. has collapsed the effects of psychological ownership and attachment to organizational identity with vision and as a result has misattributed the source of hindrance. Furthermore, the authors disagree with Landau et al.’s assertion that conflict during change is necessarily dysfunctional and thus a hindrance to change. In fact, the authors contend that such conflict may be functional.

Resistance to change has generally been understood as a result of personal experiences and assessments about the reliability of others. Accordingly, attempts are made to alter these factors in order to win support and overcome resistance. But this understanding ignores resistance as a socially constructed reality in which people are responding more to the background conversations in which the change is being initiated than to the change itself. This paper proposes that resistance to change is a function of the ongoing background conversations that are being spoken and which create the context for both the change initiative and the responses to it. In this context, resistance is not a personal phenomenon, but a social systemic one in which resistance is maintained by the background conversations of the organization. Successfully dealing with this source of resistance requires distinguishing the background conversations and completing the past.

This article explores producing and managing change within conversationally constructed realities. Conversations are proposed as both the medium and product of reality construction within which change is a process of shifting conversations in the network of conversations that constitute organizations. In this context, change entails bringing new conversations into a sustained existence and the job of change managers is to create the conversational realities that produce effective action rather than to align organizations with some “true” reality.

As Piderit (2000) points out, much of the work on resistance to change borrows from the field of mechanics, conceptualizing resistance as a force that slows or stops motion and increases the energy and work required to alter the rate and magnitude (distance) of movement. These ideas are evident in Lewin's (1947) work on resistance in which he conceptualizes a quasi-stationary equilibrium as a dynamic balance between a field of forces driving for movement in one direction and a field of forces driving for movement in the opposite direction; movement in the equilibrium occurs only through increases and decreases in these forces.

In the network of conversations that constitute the realities called organizations, the focus and unit of work in producing and managing change is conversation. This means that change agents work with, through, and on conversations to generate, sustain, and complete new conversations in order to bring about an altered network of conversations that results in the accomplishment of specific commitments. This chapter proposes that bringing about this alteration is an infective process in which change agents “infect” organizations with new conversations. Drawing on the field of epidemiology, it explores the nature of that infective process and the roles infective agents, susceptible hosts, and environmental factors play in it. These factors are then put into a conversational context and their implications for organizational change explored.

In this symposium, we debate three key tensions within current and emerging organizational change scholarship and practice: engagement, energy, and emotion. The first debate considers the dialectic...

It has generally been argued that leadership is a key to successful organizational change. However, as some authors have noted, there is a dearth of empirical research regarding leadership in the c...

Most perspectives on change propose that communication occurs in the context of change. This article inverts that perspective by proposing both that communication is the context in which change occurs and that the change process unfolds in a dynamic of four distinct types of conversations. The fundamental nature of speech as performative suggests that change is linguistically based and driven and that producing intentional change is facilitated by intentional communication. The relationships among the conversations are discussed, and implications for theory, research, and practice are given.

How we manage and produce organizational change is a function of the point of view we take regarding the phenomenon of change. But different points of view give us different understandings of the process. In this article, three different points of view, or logics, are presented: formal logic, dialectics, and trialectics. Although each point of view is discussed, the intent of this paper is to expand the logics of change to include trialectics. The implications of trialectics for organization change are discussed.

In a longitudinal study on 24 school districts the analysis of data over a 10-year-period indicates that (1) the relationship between size and the administrative component observed in cross-section...

Organizational adaptation to performance downturns has prompted numerous studies. Although these studies have focused on organizational or decision makers' characteristics influencing adaptation, neither the adaptation process nor where in the process these influences operate has been detailed. A conceptual framework for understanding adaptation to performance downturns by incorporating contingency-based literature into an interpretative-based model is described. Factors which inform decision makers' interpretations and response choices are considered and implications of the framework are discussed.

An empirical investigation was made of the effects of size, personnel education, task routineness, workflow interdependence, environmental uncertainty, and formal structure on the behavior of leade...

The article presents a review of the book “Managing Organizational Transitions,” edited by John R. Kimberley and Robert E. Quinn.

In a study of decision maker beliefs about the causes and effects of structure, a high level of agreement was found between the cognitive maps of a group of MBAs and a group of full time practicing...

The article discusses the merits of using both institutional and questionnaire measures to determine organizational structure. The study seeks to determine whether or not the convergence between qu...

Structural hysteresis provides a conceptual framework in which to consider relationships between organization size and structure during periods of decline. The use of this framework, as an extension of current theory, indicates that relationships between size and structure in declining organizations do not parallel those found in growing organizations. Participation problems, commitment, and coalition politics may explain the occurrence of structural hysteresis. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

Concepts and terms of the “operant paradigm”, based on the empirical law of effect, are suggested as alternatives to the hypothetical path-goal motivation construct which provides the major premise of the path-goal theory of leadership. Hypotheses in the path-goal theory may be explained by acognitive arguments as well. The resulting interpretation supports the basic propositions comprising the path goal theory without supporting the validity of the motivational model. Advantages and disadvantages of the acognitive alternative premise for a path-goal theory are discussed.

In this paper we review conceptual-theoretical issues raised by the neglect of decision-maker choice in structure-contingency models. We suggest an expansion of the structure-contingency framework to include the analysis of decision-maker(s) choice in explaining and predicting organization structure. We propose that an organization's structure is the result of an interaction of the decision maker's cognitive and motivational orientations, transformation strategies, and the organization's context, such as size, technology, environment, current structure, and membership. Finally, we discuss the implications of this framework.

The article reviews the book “Theories of Organizations: Form, Process, and Transformation,” by Jerald Hage.

Literature pertaining to the structural influence of size, technology, and environment is reviewed. Results indicate similar structural predictions are offered by each of the three contingency variables. The roles of measurement, unit and level of analysis, variable and effect independence, and variable dominance in research inconsistencies and future research directions are considered.

Understanding organizations' responses to performance downturns requires understanding decision makers' attributions of causality. Drawing on Weiner's causal attribution model, this paper presents a framework for categorizing causal attributions and relates them to internal and external response strategies. Characteristics of downturns, organizations, and decision makers that influence attributions and the dynamics of attributions are discussed.

A direct replication of Stafford's experiment on the role of group influence on member brand preferences for bread was conducted. Findings contrary to those of Stafford were obtained, indicating that products which are low in visibility, complexity, and perceived risk and high in testability are not susceptible to group influence.

Current perspectives on the assessment of organization performance assume that organizations exhibit a oneness of structure and that the linkages among characteristics of organizations are rational. This paper examines the validity of these assumptions and their implications for assessing organization performance.