Time and Temporality of Change Processes

The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198845973.013.27 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 730-750

Author(s):

Tor Hernes ◽

Anthony Hussenot ◽

Kätlin Pulk

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Change Processes ◽

Continuous Change ◽

The Past ◽

The Future ◽

Event Based ◽

Temporal Trajectory ◽

Types Of Change ◽

Episodic Change

Theories of organizational change tend to consider episodic and continuous change to be ontologically incompatible. We discuss how their assumed incompatibility stems from different conceptions of time. The main contribution of this chapter is to demonstrate how, by taking an event-based view, the two types of change may be integrated with one another. Continuous change takes place in the present as events in the making, whereas episodic change is marked by events in the past or as projected upon the future. This endogenous view of time as events “from within” enables the ontological gap between episodic and continuous change to be bridged. It enables us to understand how actors evoke previous episodic changes or project future episodic changes while pursuing continuous change in the on-going present. Also, in this view, continuous and episodic change become seen as two intertwined dimensions of interplay along what we call an immanent temporal trajectory.

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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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Bridging between Organization Design as a Noun and as a Verb

Designing Organization Design ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198867333.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 102-122

Author(s):

Rodrigo Magalhães

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Embodied Cognition ◽

Dynamic Change ◽

Organization Design ◽

Historical Legacy ◽

Social Organizations ◽

The Past ◽

The Future ◽

Important Challenge ◽

Embodied Cognition Theory

The two conceptions of organization design—simultaneously historical legacy and dynamic change—create a major conundrum, identified by Simon’s (1996) as an important challenge to the design of social organizations. The solution, according to Simon, is to design without final goals, however no advice is provided about how this might be achieved. In this chapter, it is proposed that this is possible through the use of mechanisms that bridge between the past and the future of the organization’s design. The mechanisms are formative affectual contexts and design trace. Enhanced by embodied cognition theory, the notion of formative context provides a solid background for an understanding of the processes of organizational change that co-evolve with organization designing. The notion of design trace is based on the idea that organizational interactions leave a trace that can be harnessed and used to help manage the organization’s designing effort.

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Between Power and Irrelevance

10.1093/oso/9780190084714.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

George E. Mitchell ◽

Hans Peter Schmitz ◽

Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Nongovernmental Organization ◽

Change Processes ◽

Transformative Change ◽

Research Projects ◽

Organizational Changes ◽

The World ◽

The Future ◽

Societal Problems

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within the transnational nongovernmental organization (TNGO) sector. Additionally, TNGOs have been embracing more transformative strategies aimed at the root causes, not just the symptoms, of societal problems. As the world has changed and TNGOs’ ambitions have expanded, the roles of TNGOs have begun to shift and their work has become more complex. To remain effective, legitimate, and relevant in the future necessitates organizational changes and investments in new capabilities. However, many organizations have been slow to adapt. As a result, for many TNGOs’ the rhetoric of sustainable impact and transformative change has far outpaced the reality of their limited abilities to deliver on their promises. This book frankly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. In short, TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they themselves operate by bringing their own “forms and norms” into better alignment with their contemporary ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist readers in formulating and implementing organizational changes to adapt TNGOs for the future. The book draws upon a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects.

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Projecting Backward and Forward on Processes of Organizational Change and Innovation

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science ◽

10.1177/00218863211042895 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002188632110428

Author(s):

Andrew H. Van de Ven

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Organizational Change ◽

Regulatory Process ◽

Process Models ◽

Evolutionary Models ◽

Continuous Change ◽

Organizational Changes ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Episodic Change

This essay discusses how views of organizational change and innovation have traditionally focused on planned episodic change that focuses on rational, strategic, top-down and consensus-directed interventions following teleological or regulatory process models. Future scholarship seems to be focusing more on unplanned continuous organizational changes that emphasize experiential, emergent, bottom-up, pluralistic social movements following dialectical and evolutionary models of change. While planned-episodic and unplanned-continuous change may appear to be opposing views of organizational change, they are entangled in one-another, and provide a rich agenda of future scholarship on processes of organizational change and innovation.

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