Not even the past: The joint influence of former leader and new leader during leader succession in the midst of organizational change.

Studies interested in the discursive use of ‘the past’ often view history as an organizational resource designed to create a shared origin and a common purpose, promoting a sense of continuity and commitment among organizational stakeholders. In this article, I view ‘history’ instead as a symbolic site for discursive struggles between proponents and opponents of organizational change. It shows how organizational actors use ‘traces’ of a collective past in their version of ‘the’ history to win consent for change and to counter competing views. They do so by creating a sense of discontinuity from the past. The case study presented in this article combines a historian’s account of a newspaper’s history with an ethnographic account of the use of history prevalent among newspaper editors. While the historian’s narrative suggests the continuance of some vigorous traditions alongside identity change, the editors narratively construct or ‘invent’ transitions between periods or episodes while disregarding the organization’s traditions in their everyday talk. Storying the past, present and future in terms of a temporal dichotomy and ‘inventing’ transitions departs from existing studies of rhetorical history that tend to highlight invented traditions which establish or reaffirm continuity with the past. The case analysis shows how the editors selectively and strategically deploy history to accomplish or oppose change as part of ongoing negotiations within the editorial staff.

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Appropriating the Past in Organizational Change Management

Time, Temporality, and History in Process Organization Studies ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198870715.003.0012 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 220-239

Author(s):

Henrik Koll ◽

Astrid Jensen

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Change Management ◽

Performance Management ◽

Ethnographic Study ◽

Alternative View ◽

Organizational Change Management ◽

The Past ◽

The Impact ◽

Modes Of Existence ◽

Practical Sense

This chapter offers an analysis of organizational change management in a Scandinavian telecom from a historical perspective. Based on an ethnographic study, we investigate how the past was appropriated by managers for the purpose of implementing performance management in the company’s operations department. By combining Bourdieusian theory with a narrative approach to analysis, the chapter provides an alternative view on the impact of history to organizational change management studies by bridging objective and subjective elements of history. This is achieved by illustrating how practice brings together two modes of existence of history in action—that is, how habitus and field dialectically adjust to each other while endowing actors with a “practical sense” that allows them to appropriate history in practice. We show how actors’ inclination to appropriate and narrate history in certain ways was itself a product of historical acquisition derived from their experience in the departmental field of struggle.

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Living up to the past? Ideological sensemaking in organizational transition

Organization ◽

10.1177/1350508414527247 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 543-567 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Mairi Maclean ◽

Charles Harvey ◽

John A. A. Sillince ◽

Benjamin D. Golant

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Collective Memory ◽

Oral History ◽

Empirical Analysis ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Organizational History ◽

Organizational Transition ◽

The Past ◽

Top Managers ◽

Over Time

This article builds upon archival and oral-history research on organizational change at Procter & Gamble from 1930 to 2000, focusing on periods of transition. It examines historical narrative as a vehicle for ideological sensemaking by top managers. Our empirical analysis sheds light on continuities in the narratives they offer, through which the past emerges as a recurrent lever of strategic manoeuvres and re-orientations. This reveals that while organizational history is sometimes regarded as a strategic asset or intrinsic part of collective memory, it is also re-enacted as a shared heritage, implying responsibilities. Executives (re)interpret the past and author the future, maintaining the historical narrative while using interpellation to ensure ideological consistency over time. The interpellative power of rhetorical narrative helps to recast organizational members as participants in an ongoing drama. In this way executives claim their legitimate right to initiate and manage organizational transition.

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History and Organizational Change

Journal of Management ◽

10.1177/0149206316675031 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 19-38 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

Roy Suddaby ◽

William M. Foster

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Historical Consciousness ◽

Future Directions ◽

The Past ◽

The Future ◽

Literature History

This research commentary introduces historical consciousness to studying organizational change. Most theories of organizational change contain within them implicit assumptions about history. Made explicit, these assumptions tend to cluster into different models of change that vary by the assumed objectivity of the past and the associated malleability of the future. We explore and elaborate the implicit assumptions of history. We identify four implicit models of history in the change literature: History-as-Fact, History-as-Power, History-as-Sensemaking, and History-as-Rhetoric. We discuss the implications of theorizing organizational change from each of these views of history and outline future directions for studying change with a heightened understanding of history.

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Review Article: The past, present and future of organization development: Taking the long view

Human Relations ◽

10.1177/0018726712450058 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 65 (11) ◽

pp. 1395-1429 ◽

Cited By ~ 88

Author(s):

Bernard Burnes ◽

Bill Cooke

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Organization Development ◽

Review Article ◽

Western World ◽

Future Prospects ◽

The Past ◽

Current State ◽

History Of ◽

Kurt Lewin

Organization development has been, and arguably still is, the major approach to organizational change across the Western world, and increasingly globally. Despite this, there appears to be a great deal of confusion as to its origins, nature, purpose and durability. This article reviews the ‘long’ history of organization development from its origins in the work of Kurt Lewin in the late 1930s to its current state and future prospects. It chronicles and analyses the major stages, disjunctures and controversies in its history and allows these to be seen in a wider context. The article closes by arguing that, although organization development remains the dominant approach to organizational change, there are significant issues that it must address if it is to achieve the ambitious and progressive social and organizational aims of its founders.

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Identity Reinforcement or Risky Organizational Change? Category Spanning in Humanitarian Projects

Administrative Sciences ◽

10.3390/admsci11040111 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 111

Author(s):

Eva A. P. Kooijman ◽

Nikolaus Beck

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Detrimental Effect ◽

Fixed Effect ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Regression Methods ◽

The Past ◽

Logit Regression ◽

Governmental Organizations ◽

Humanitarian Organizations ◽

Non Governmental Organizations

In this study, we investigate the consequences of organizational change that consist of adding new categories to the portfolio of humanitarian organizations. Our aim is to discern differences in these consequences between specialist and generalist organizations. Previous research has shown that spanning categories lead to disadvantages in the evaluation of organizations by audience members in terms of the attention they receive from the audience but did not focus on the distinction between specialists, organizations that have no history in spanning categories, and generalists, organizations that have already done so in the past. Using fixed effect logit regression methods on project approval among 2480 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the humanitarian sector, we show that category spanning is tantamount to risky organizational change for specialist organizations, which leads to a reduction in project approval. However, generalists benefit from category spanning, which indicates identity reinforcement. We also show that in the case of urgent demand, spanning categories has a less detrimental effect. Consequently, organizations that have successfully undergone a change from a specialist to a generalist identity no longer suffer from category spanning. Moreover, also situations of urgent demand reduce the negative consequences of category spanning.

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Innovation Policy as Creating Markets, Not Only Fixing Them

Complexity and Evolution ◽

10.7551/mitpress/9780262035385.003.0014 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Mariana Mazzucato

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Organizational Change ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Innovation Policy ◽

Market Failures ◽

The Past ◽

The World ◽

Successful Innovation ◽

Transformative Impact ◽

Innovation Policies

Successful innovation policies are those that actively create and shape markets, not only fix them. In the past this has been achieved through “mission-oriented” policies aimed not at fixing market failures or minimizing government failures, but rather on maximizing the transformative impact of policy. Countries around the world are currently striving to achieve innovation-led growth that is both inclusive and sustainable. For this to happen, public policy needs to support innovation and direct future activities. Innovation policy must focus on building more “symbiotic” (less parasitic) innovation “ecosystems.” This chapter discusses new types of policy questions needed to address the collective, uncertain, and persistent nature of innovation and posits four key areas: directing public policy, evaluating public policy, organizational change to accommodate risk taking and exploration, and the socialization of risks and rewards.

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