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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The U-approach to forest modeling

Canadian Journal of Forest Research ◽

10.1139/x02-175 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 480-489 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Boris Zeide

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Growth Models ◽

Process Models ◽

Single Plant ◽

Top Down ◽

Growth Processes ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Physiological Processes ◽

Forest Modeling ◽

Process Based Models

So far, process-based models use largely the bottom-up approach. They start by describing physiological processes in a single plant element and then integrate the constituent processes to predict growth and dimensions of the tree and stand. Although bottom-up process models are praised for their contribution to knowledge of growth processes, their predictions are poor. The complementary top-down approach begins where the bottom-up model ends: with measurable variables such as height or diameter. This approach intends to uncover the ecophysiological processes responsible for the observed tree dimensions rather than to provide growth information for forest management. As foresters, we would like to utilize measurable variables to uncover inner mechanisms of growth in hope of predicting future diameter, number of trees, volume, and other practical variables. This means that we need to combine the top-down and bottom-up approaches. Examples of the united U-approach (so called because of its descending and ascending branches) are described. They demonstrate that growth models can be both meaningful and accurate.

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External Communities as Initiators of Organizational Change

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science ◽

10.1177/00218863211045469 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002188632110454

Author(s):

Kimberly Rocheville ◽

Christopher B. Keys ◽

Jean M. Bartunek

Keyword(s):

Organizational Change ◽

Sense Of Community ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Psychological Sense Of Community ◽

Change Effort ◽

Black Lives Matter ◽

Psychological Sense ◽

Lasting Change ◽

Change Efforts

Organizational change literature has long described the ways change efforts are designed and executed, with particular attention to where the change effort initiated: whether from the top down or the bottom up. In this paper, we expand this focus and describe how communities external to organizations can also be initiators of change within organizations. Through two examples, the Black Lives Matter movement and Old Coke Drinkers of America, we demonstrate the power of communities outside of organizations for initiating meaningful and lasting change within organizations. We explain that the power of such communities for initiating organizational change is derived in part from their members’ psychological sense of community (PSOC). We propose that scholars and practitioners alike should pay attention to this phenomenon by offering an agenda for developing research on impacts of communities and their PSOC that may affect organizational change.

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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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