Exploring discourse-based organizational change in Japan: practicing between dominant and alternative discourses

The primary objective of this study is to respond to Grant and Marshak’s (J Appl Behav Sci 47:204–235, 2011) call for a move toward change perspectives that emphasize the generative nature of discourses, narratives, and conversations and how change practitioners discursively facilitate emergent processes. This article attempts to explore the question, “Can we specify the conditions and sources which make generative conversations emerge and may lead to a successful change effort in Japan?” The abductive inquiry into the question indicates that the generative change process convinces change sponsors that changing the dominant discourses and welcoming alternative ones can lead to the long-term development of the organization and the members. With respect to the sources of alternative discourses, psychological safety and trust in the external authority figure are generally required. The importance of survival anxiety and talent diversity may vary across the broad contexts on which organizations depend.

External Communities as Initiators of Organizational Change

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.

WinSETT - Creating a Centre for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour was a foundational builder of equity, diversity, and inclusion in Canada. This article describes her vision and leadership in creating the Canadian Centre for Women in Science, Engineering, Trades, and Technology (WinSETT Centre, www.winsett.ca) to generate and sustain national conversations and diversity initiatives. We outline the activities associated with these phases — beginning the diversity initiative, building on success, creating capacity, and launching a national centre — to demonstrate how this change effort has evolved. The comprehensive work since 2003 illustrates the focus, tenacity, and institutional entrepreneurship of Dr. Armour to ‘move the dial’ for diversity and inclusion in Canada. She was a pioneer in social entrepreneurship, creating the organizations, initiatives, and networks to support systemic change.

Creating Energy for Change: The Role of Changes in Perceived Leadership Support on Commitment to an Organizational Change Initiative

Leader support is critical for organizational change, yet prior research has examined support as a static construct. Drawing on social learning and change momentum theories, we hypothesized that increases in perceptions of leadership support across the first 2 years of a change effort is related to employee perceptions of positive change at Time 2 and personal commitment to change and organizational citizenship behaviors at Time 3. To test this model, we collected data in 2012, 2013, and 2015 at a state wildlife agency undergoing a large-scale change effort. Across Time 1 and Time 2, perceptions of leader support of the change increased, and this shift was related to perceptions of positive internal and external changes. Changes in perceptions of leader support also indirectly predicted personal commitment to change and organizational citizenship behaviors, mediated by perceptions of positive internal and external changes. Findings substantiate the importance of continual leadership support.

Inhabited Ecosystems: Propelling Transformative Social Change Between and Through Organizations

Two research streams examine how social movements operate both “in and around” organizations. We probe the empirical spaces between these streams, asking how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts contributes to transformative social change. By exploring activities in the mid-1990s related to advocacy for domestic partner benefits at 24 organizations in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, we develop the concept of inhabited ecosystems to explore the relational processes by which employee activists advance change. These activists faced a variety of structural opportunities and restraints, and we identify five mechanisms that sustained their efforts during protracted contestation: learning even from thwarted activism, borrowing from one another’s more or less radical approaches, helping one another avoid the traps of stagnation, fostering solidarity and ecosystem capabilities, and collaboratively expanding the social movement domain. We thus reveal how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts animates an inhabited ecosystem of challengers that propels change efforts “between and through” organizations. These efforts, even when exploratory or incomplete, generate an ecosystem’s capacity to sustain, resource, and even reshape the larger transformative social change effort.