The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers

This work provides an overview of the contributions of Billie Alban, one of the foremost early thinkers and leaders in the field of OD and change. From her early childhood and throughout her life, Billie became the voice of advocacy for stakeholder inclusion. Starting with her young adult life, this chapter explores the influences early OD figures had on her development as a practitioner and then moves on to her own formidable contributions to the field which served to influence the development of generations of OD practitioners. Billie Alban’s key works on the use of large scale change methods, her collaborators and her beliefs that we are always in community are discussed, as is the key legacy of her work and presence in the field of OD.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Chris Argyris played a unique, pioneering role in the development of our understanding of individuals, organizations, learning, and change. As a teacher and consultant, he was provocative, challenging, polarizing, and memorable. Many prominent scholars and practitioners credit Argyris as one of their most influential mentors. His influence stemmed from his writing as well as his personal impact. He provided the first major statement of the argument that conventional management practices create a fundamental conflict between organizations and people that is harmful to both because they treat employees like children. He developed the first comprehensive theory of organizational intervention, emphasizing core values, action research, and the ways that intervention and research can be mutually supportive. He emphasized the importance of clear values to guide efforts at organizational improvement, underscoring the importance of valid information, free and informed choice, and internal commitment. His work with Donald Schön on theories for action documented the pervasiveness of gaps between what people do and what they think they’re doing. Those gaps impede organizational learning and effectiveness but prevent individuals and groups from seeing their own causality and result in behavior that deepens the problems individuals wish they could solve. Those ideas also led into work on organizational learning which emphasized that self-awareness and willingness to talk about “hot” issues are necessary but rare in organizational life.

The Scottish poet, Robert Burns, once wrote that “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men, gang aft agley” (as cited in Crawford and MacLachlan 2009, p. 48). The journey Achilles Armenakis has taken perhaps can be best described as a journey to understand why the best laid change schemes of men have “gang aft agley.” This chapter describes his personal journey along with those of his colleagues to not only understand the problems that arise when organizational leaders try to implement change initiatives but also to offer a framework by which organizational symptoms impacting organizational performance may be recognized, causes of those symptoms discovered, and solutions to “fix the causes” may be proposed. Understanding the process of diagnosis and evaluation, while identifying diagnostic bias, initially drove much of his research. However, during his voyage of research and discovery, Armenakis focused on change readiness or readiness for change in an organization. Along with his colleagues, and those doctoral students he so much influenced as a teacher, he has sought to answer the critical question of how change impacts organizational members, or change recipients, and what motivates them to not only accept but embrace a change initiative. I was one of those students fortunate enough to have the opportunity of studying under him and being along on part of that voyage. A favorite quote of his over the years has been that of Marcel Proust (Proust, Remembrance of things past. New York: Vintage Books, 1981 edition): “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” Somehow, this has always seemed appropriate.

The landscape of the organizational change literature provides a rich and diverse terrain of ideas, theories, and models for both researchers and practitioners. When embarking on this journey, one would benefit from the contributions of the seminal thinkers in the organizational change field. In this chapter, readers are introduced to Frank J. Barrett, professor of management and global policy at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monetary, CA. Barrett’s work provides an interesting and somewhat different approach to organizational change, which has been influenced by his early experiences in literature and jazz improvisation. Central to Barrett’s contributions is the social construction of organizing and change. Barrett has argued that our understanding of change can be deepened through a social constructionist approach that places discourse and meaning-making as central to the process of change. In making this argument, Barrett challenges the dominant model of change as a rational process. Much of Barrett’s contributions are also embedded in the idea that the shift from and industrial society to a postindustrial society has pressured organizations to find new ways to conceptualize and practice change. Barrett has used the metaphor of jazz improvisation as a way to engage in concepts, models, and practice of change. Readers will benefit from Barrett’s work, not only for an alternative view of organizational change, but as a way to deepen their understanding and creative capacity for organizing and change.

Throughout her career, Jean Bartunek has purposely placed herself on boundaries and excitedly explored the tensions inherent in those boundaries. Theory and practice, insider and outsider, academic and practitioner, qualitative and quantitative – she’s mined all these boundaries for insights that go well beyond the boundary in question. These studies challenge researchers, students, and managers to look beyond their own perspectives and embrace a form of dialectical inquiry to find the voices they may be ignoring or unconsciously undervaluing. Jean’s work on second-order change, insider/outsider research methods, and academic-practitioner dynamics continues to contribute to our understanding of dialects, especially those that are initially hidden, and the paradoxes that are often attached to them.Jean lives these boundaries in addition to studying them. In addition to being a full-time academic, she is also a Roman Catholic sister, a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Both of these sides of her life are crucial to her identity and have been throughout her adult life.A number of current areas of inquiry have benefited from Jean’s work. These include context-sensitive sensemaking, missing voices in change theory and design, the lived experience of change, planned change and transformation, process and implementation theories, emotion in change, and idea translation across boundaries.

Richard Beckhard is recognized as one of the founders of the field of organization development and as a pioneer in the study and teaching of a systemic approach to planned change in complex organizations. As an educator, Beckhard was an adjunct professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he teamed with Douglas McGregor, Warren Bennis, and Edgar Schein in the early development of MIT’s Department of Organization Studies. A practitioner at heart, he applied behavioral sciences to translate his international consulting experiences into many useful change management models and tools that still influence practice of change leadership today including the Formula for Change, Open Systems Planning, Responsibility Charting, Confrontation Meeting, and Task-Oriented Team Development. As an institution builder, he helped found the Organization Development Network, the International Organization Development Association, and the Family Firm Institute.

Michael Beer of the Harvard Business School is mainly known for his work on organizational change, strategic human resource management, and for the development of approaches/methods for strategic renewal. After a first career as an organizational researcher at Corning Glass works, he has remained a scholar-practitioner, with a burning interest in doing research which is both useful for theory and practice. Beer is interested in how organizational systems learn and change and ultimately in understanding what over time creates organizational system effectiveness. A major problem, he and his colleagues argue, is that management usually does not address changes in a systemic way. The result is a much lower success rate of organizational change initiatives. The employees of the organization often know how it can be improved, but because “truth cannot speak to power”, management only rarely gets to know what the organization thinks. They are therefore restricted from making a systemic analysis and do not get to know how they can address change in a systemic manner. A substantial part of Beer’s research has been focused on how to make such situations better. Together with a set of colleagues from aspirational CEOs of major corporations Beer and colleagues formed both an international consultancy firm – TruePoint, as well as a network of research centers – the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership.

Warren G. Bennis was an intellectual pioneer in group dynamics, planned change and organization development, and leadership. He was both a scholar and university administrator with diverse interests in how the applied social sciences can serve the betterment of people, organizations, and society. Warren’s research and writing laid the foundation for how we think about team development and the role of democratic forms of organizing in adapting to turbulent environments. His work on planned change and organization development helped to define these applied fields and point the way for their growth and progress. Warren’s research on leadership transformed how we define leaders versus managers and how we understand what leaders do to develop people and organizations. It showed that the core of leadership is creating trustworthy relationships with self and others. Warren G. Bennis is required reading for any of us interested in organizational change.

Wilfred Bion was a change leader who served in and lived through two World Wars and was deeply affected by his experiences on the battlefield and later in treating veterans with shell shock as an army psychiatrist. From his earliest experiences of group life (including bullying) at a British boarding school, to his frustration of enduring the politics and sometimes corrupt aspects of military life, to his satisfaction in developing new, respectful and successful treatment modalities for veterans, to his innovative efforts at transforming the army’s hiring practices, and finally to being a founding member of group relations and experiential learning in industry – Bion’s contributions to organization change are monumental and long lasting. His theory of basic assumptions in group life, his development of the therapeutic community, and his ground-breaking leaderless group technique are all innovations that are used today in organization change efforts. More than half a century after Bion formulated his ideas, his contributions continue to reverberate with significant impact. This chapter traces Bion’s life and legacy as a seminal leader in organization change.

Although Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton taught and applied social psychology comprehensively and across boundaries, they were best known for creating and teaching the Managerial Grid. Based on the two fundamental functions of leadership – task structure and human relations – they took the position that there was one best way to lead and mange. This normative stance emanated from the combination of a manger’s concern for production (task) and concern for people (relationship). Blake and Mouton’s 5-day Grid Seminar in the 1960s became popular worldwide. Competition soon emerged in the form of contingency theories and situational leadership models best represented by Hersey and Blanchard’s model. They among others argued that the Grid did not take into account the situation which varied according to subordinates’ levels of job knowledge and experience. Thus a manger’s approach should range from telling, selling, participating, or delegating depending on the situation as defined by subordinates’ levels of maturity regarding their job knowledge.Using a 9-point scale, Blake and Mouton argued further that the degree of the two concerns for production and people established a “style” of management and that a 9,9 combination of the two concerns (maximum degree of 9) determined the style that was a participative approach to leadership and management – the best way to manage and lead. A 9,1 combination, an authority-obedience style; a 1,9 was “country club” management; a 1,1 was an “impoverished” style (all poor choices); and in the middle of the Grid 5,5 was a second-best, compromising style.Blake and Mouton got their ideas from social psychology, field research especially at Humble Oil in the Houston area and from their consulting work. As a result of their professional activities over the years they coauthored 30 books. Even though Blake and Mouton were grounded in considerable research, sound theory, and years of practice as consultants, they eventually lost the popularity war. With its simplicity and quick application appeal Hersey and Blanchard’s model in particular was too attractive in the marketplace. The superior scholarship behind the Grid did not seem to matter that much. Some conclusions regarding this outcome are discussed in the conclusion section of the chapter.

Boje, David M. holds a Wells Fargo Professorship and is a distinguished professor and Bill Daniels Ethics Fellow in the management department at New Mexico State University. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University. His specialty is organizational storytelling using qualitative methods ranging from traditional narrative to living story emergence, to new work utilizing Shifts-Patterns-Uniqueness-Discrepancies-Self-Assumptions in doing the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association field note methods. He is best known for his groundbreaking work in storytelling, including antenarrative and quantum storytelling theory, as well as his key role in the creation of multiple organizations fostering postmodern, critical, and spiritually informed approaches to scholarly dialogue. Each phase of Boje’s four-decade career (so far) has served to more firmly situate him, and the field of organization development as a whole, on the path toward more inclusive and ontologically sound ways of knowing, Being, and influencing the world.

Barbara Benedict Bunker’s pioneering work has influenced organizational practitioners for more than 50 years. One of the first women in the field, she paved the way for others. Her legacy is documented in the nine books she coauthored; the 36 articles and 27 book chapters she authored or coauthored; and the more than 85 presentations she has made throughout her career. Her legacy is also alive in the thousands of people to whom she has taught, mentored, and consulted. She is not only a great thinker, she is a wonderful teacher and an excellent practitioner. What is remarkable about Bunker’s contributions is that they are not limited to one topic or one aspect of the field. Her contributions include work on gender issues, trust, conflict management, practitioner development, and large group interventions. Her university teaching grounds students in theory and her work in the field has improved organizations and institutions. In this chapter, I will trace early influences on Bunker’s career and how her curiosity, use of self, and desire to contribute to the field has made a difference for the people with whom she has interacted around the world.

W. Warner Burke is a consummate psychologist and vital contributor to the field of organization development and change. For over 50 years he has been a thought leader and a dedicated steward of the profession. He was often the “first” in key organizational roles forging new professional territory as an architect of institutions and programs. Leadership, self-awareness, organization change, and learning agility are at the center of his academic work. Consulting to complex systems – both tightly coupled and loosely coupled, and designing learning opportunities for individuals, groups, and organizations, are at the center of his professional practice. A leader in the field, he has been recognized throughout his career with numerous honors and awards for his scholarship and practice in organization development and change. This chapter substantiates the enduring values and relationships, institutions and thoughts, enduring work, legacies, and unfinished business, of W. Warner Burke – learner, leader, and scholar-practitioner.

This chapter sets out the contribution of Bernard Burnes, currently of Stirling University Scotland, as a “great” in the theory of change management. The connection between his personal career, his life experience, and his approach to change management is set out – particularly his commitment to democratic and humanist values in the management of change and the belief that there is no “one best way” when it comes to change management and particularly that top-down change can cause more problems than it solves. Burnes’ particular contributions are discussed. He is “primus inter pares” in Kurt Lewin studies, discovering, reassessing, and integrating Lewin’s work and attempting to complete the Lewinian project. He is the sole author of a leading textbook on change management, over a number of editions, which have seen his text incorporate and expand the major change issues of the day. And his work which draws together and theorizes the relation between leadership and change is set out. Burnes’ influence is considered quantitatively, in terms of citations and downloads – but also intellectually. In key areas of change management, Burnes has been a pathfinder. His ongoing commitments to addressing the major problems of the world, particularly in relation to the environment and sustainability and the approaches to social changes that are required draw the chapter to its conclusion.

Gervase R. Bushe, for four decades and counting, has explored, challenged, and evolved the field of organizational change. His passion and conviction flow from a desire for more organizations to become places where people have opportunities to make free and informed choices so that they are engaged to give their very best in the work they do. This thread is evident throughout every strand of his work, each manifested as a contribution to create collective, participative engagement methods for organizational change. His work to build useful, relevant change theory and practice spans the disciplines of organizational design, appreciative inquiry, leadership, and organization development (OD).With a rich lineage in personal and organizational development, Bushe’s influences span the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and wider system domains. This eclectic, integrated understanding – in theory and in practice – appears throughout his work, and the complementarity between these builds over time. The two latest examples are the widely used Clear Leadership method and program; and his paradigm shifting work to frame the emerging new threads of OD with the term now becoming known as Dialogic OD. As well as these recent integrated contributions, Bushe has also made incisive contributions within particular areas, perhaps the best known being his work from the earliest days of appreciative inquiry to help define, test, refine, and amplify its power and effectiveness as a method. Tracking and fanning, synergenesis, amplification, generativity, and generative images are all ideas born out of this work, and they have returned over time in Bushe’s work on leadership and Dialogic OD. Less well known but highly regarded in academic circles is his early work on parallel learning structures.Bushe’s strong grounding in both experiential laboratory education such as T-groups and the action research tradition, have influenced his work consistently, giving a clearly recognizable trademark to his contributions, perhaps best summed up as human, accessible, highly practical and progressive.

How we conceive our capacity for “agency” in the world has enormous implications for how we think about the possibilities and limits of our ability to manage change in organizations and society. For Raymond Caldwell, agency is the prism through which we think about change. If we conceive ourselves as things, as “substances” that simply think and act intentionally or rationally, we will end up with extremely limited epistemologies for understanding agency. For Caldwell the old models of knowledge and power, rationality and control, and agency and structure in organizations have fallen apart. The idea of “distributed agency” partly captures this reality by treating change as an ongoing process defined by practices, which in turn questions explanations of change that rely on intentional action or abstract notions of organizations as entities that change from one relatively fixed state to another. In sum, he treats agency as a practice and change as a process. But Caldwell’s recent work, partly under the philosophical influence of Whitehead, takes these ideas further by including the nonhuman in how we define distributed agency: agency is potentially everywhere in a social-material world in which the ontological divide between the social and the natural world no longer makes much sense. Always provocative, always challenging, Caldwell’s work is an important contribution to redefining the boundaries of how we think of agency and change in organizations. After briefly noting some early influences on Caldwell’s work, the chapter organizes his contributions into three major phases: agency and change, agency as practice, and change as a process. A key insight section then reflects on how his early contributions have influenced others. The chapter concludes with legacies and new directions in Caldwell’s search for a process-in-practice perspective on organizational change.

Kim Cameron, is a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. During his career, he has generated several influential contributions that have shaped the field of organizational change. He has been a prolific researcher and writer, authoring 13 books and over 120 articles. Through his research, he has made deep contributions to a broad range of topics including organizational effectiveness, organizational decline and downsizing, organizational culture and the competing values framework, organizational paradox, organizational virtuousness, and positive organizational scholarship.

Robert Chin and Kenneth Benne spent key years in the middle of their careers working and collaborating with each other. Chin came from a social psychology background while Benne was from an educational philosophy background. During their time together, they founded an interdisciplinary Human Relations Center at Boston University, cowrote a seminal book on planned change with Warren Bennis and, within that text, developed three key strategies for implementing a planned change. Even in their organizational change work, there was always a social undertone to their work. Perhaps more important than the seminal work in planned change that is still referenced today was their individual and collaborative goal to help others accept and leverage – and not just tolerate – diversity in the social system. This chapter discusses their individual influences and motivations, their collaborative work and contributions to the change community, and how their work, both together and separate, inspired others.

David Coghlan is first and foremost a scholar practitioner who has interrogated what this means both philosophically and as a practitioner of and educator in organization development (OD). He is most widely known for his conceptualization of insider action research and for introducing action research and OD to new audiences across different disciplines and settings through the book Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization, now in its fourth edition. As action research becomes increasingly diffuse in terms of different modalities, Coghlan’s theoretical papers on authenticity, practical knowing and interiority offer core ideas that speak to and transcend the particularity of each modality. Coghlan is a major contributor to the field of OD through his writing and editing work. His exploration of the OD/action research heritage includes its history, modes of expression, and action research’s rejected place in the academy. He coedited The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research, a major contribution to the world of action research that brings together its myriad histories, contributors, theories, methods, and practices. This work represents an important characteristic of Coghlan’s writing, namely, his exploration of relationships between ideas such as action learning and action research, thus, bringing a freshness to how we apply them to practice. Coghlan remains a prolific writer in his field, and his oeuvre reflects his ongoing work toward articulating of a philosophy of OD.

This chapter reviews the contributions of David L. Cooperrider, starting from his the outline of Egalitarian Theory, his articulation of Appreciative Inquiry, his work studying social innovations and promoting the Business as an Agent of World Benefit project. The chapter traces his early influences including his parents and uncles, his mentors at Case Western Reserve University – Suresh Srivastva and Ronald Fry, and the writings of Kenneth Gergen, and others. Finally, the chapter outlines the way in which his work has had an impact in the field of Organizational Change.

Samuel Culbert payed attention to his experience and made himself the consummate applied behavioral scientist. He is an almost five decade contributor of pathbreaking ideas, skilled in identifying management dysfunction and original in suggesting models of progressive organizational change. Combining a clinician’s eye with system analytic, inductive thinking, he constructs mid-level theoretical frameworks aimed at influencing frontline practitioners along with academically housed students of change. Always “outside the box” challenging conventional wisdom and mainstream practice, his contributions have been both methodological and substantive. His body of work combines an intense humanism with critical thinking that advances the state of knowledge.This essay attempts to review the roots of his thinking, the essence of his work, and the muckraking advocacy stances he has taken. We see the progression of his thinking in his forthcoming book where he revises some of his previous assumptions about organizations, concluding that far more variables than previously thought must be engaged for the management mentality, mainstream in organizations, to appreciably change.

Tom Cummings is best known for his text Organization Development and Change, widely referred to as “the bible of OD.” This chapter traces the development of his thought leading up to that text and beyond. I discuss his long-standing engagement with socio-technical systems and organization design, his synthesis of those with traditional organization development, his work on transorganizational design and on the strategy process, and his emerging work on “care” in organization studies.

Combining neo-institutionalism, actor network theory, and Gabriel Tarde’s sociology, Czarniawska considers the key driver of organizational change to be imitation but an imitation that rests on translation. Organizations emulate one another by translating fashionable ideas according to their understanding, traditions, needs, and means. As translation in this tradition always entails a transformation of the translated idea or object, unexpected consequences will be expected. She does not consider these consequences to be necessarily negative; however, because if stabilized and institutionalized, unintended change can turn out to be as positive as planned change. A further strength of Czarniawska’s is her ability to provide methodological tools that follow the translation processes for change: organizational ethnographies, narrative methodology, and shadowing.

This chapter discusses the life and career of Kathleen (Kathie) D. Dannemiller, a gifted teacher and one of the most respected consultants of her era. It takes the reader on Kathie’s journey from the influences of her early life as the daughter of a union organizer to the pursuit of her PhD the year prior to her death in 2003. The reader will learn that Kathie saw herself as an action researcher by training and belief and the impact that this orientation had on the groundbreaking practices that she pioneered. Kathie was the first to facilitate large groups in an interactive process that got real work done. The largest of her career, a meeting of over 2,000, successfully moved an automotive industry giant closer to its vision of the future. Her passionate, engaging, and direct style profoundly affected many people, from presidents of large complex organizations to front line workers, both by what she said and did and the way she listened and encouraged them to discover their own new ways to move forward. The chapter lays out the underlying values of her work while honoring those that went before her and those that partnered with her in the firm she and Chuck Tyson created, Dannemiller Tyson Associates. Kathie and her partners developed new models and processes that are now used by thousands of leaders and consultants around the world. The chapter closes with tributes to her life and her work from many of those worldwide clients and consultants who attribute much of their success to what they learned from this amazing woman.

Patrick Dawson is a contemporary organizational sociologist born in England and now based in Australia. His abiding research interest has focused on “why people do the things that they do,” His research trajectory was positioned by growing up in a working class family in the industrial Southwest of England and his interests in sociological theory, early urban ethnography, neo-Marxism, and phenomenology. He developed a processual approach to organizational change that promotes the importance of viewing change as a nonlinear dynamic rather than a simple progressive series of causal stages. When first developed, his processual perspective strongly contrasted with the dominance of organization development (OD), contingency, and recipe-type approaches in adopting the view that examining changes as they happen is central to building knowledge about complex change processes. His approach draws attention to commonly overlooked areas in studying the complexity and messiness of change including issues of time and temporality, political process, narratives and sensemaking, and the multiple views and interpretations that all shape and influence change processes. Dawson’s research spans multiple sectors and organizations from heavy industry to human services and is characterized by its strong empirical grounding in seeking to understand change as an ongoing dynamic process using fine-grained, longitudinal, ethnographic investigations. Dawson has established himself as a leading international scholar in management research having published 13 books and over 60 refereed journal articles as well as sitting on various international editorial boards.

Daniel R. Denison’s career sets a high bar for the impact a scholar-practitioner can have through his or her work. As a teacher, scholar, and consultant on the topics of organizational culture and leadership, his contributions have shaped our current understanding and practices for how to measure corporate culture and “bring it to the bottom line” of business performance. His work has gone a long way to push the study of organizational cultures beyond the ivory towers and equip business leaders with the tools and insights needed to make a real difference in the organizations they lead.

Kevin Dooley began his career as an industrial engineer and continues his work as a designer of complex human and information networks. His curiosity about how change emerged over time led him to explore complexity at the edge of many fields, including mathematics, philosophy, physics, and computer science. His passion for pragmatic applications led him to engage in complex patterns of individual and institutional behavior as it emerged in the real world.Kevin pioneered the use of inductive quantitative data analysis to understand options and influence decision-making and action in complex social, business, and natural environments. Rather than positing a hypothesis, then testing it with data, as most change researchers usually do, Kevin analyzed data as it was generated and looked for the patterns. He then used those patterns to understand and influence change in complex human systems. He used the principles of complex adaptive systems sciences to see, understand, and improve patterns in teams, organizations, and processes.At various times in his career, he was engaged with total quality management, process analysis and improvement, and supply chain management. He held the first joint chair in engineering and business at the Arizona State University and continues to explore the sometimes chaotic intersection between physical and social systems. His master work is still a work in progress. Currently, he leads The Sustainability Consortium, an international network of organizations that captures, stores, and reports information about the carbon footprints for supply chains of consumer products.

Dexter DunphyDunphy, D. is an Australian who contributed to organization development theory in the early 1970s and then in the 1990s (with colleague Doug Stace) introduced to the field of organization theory a comprehensive contingency model of organization change. He held academic appointments at Harvard University, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).He also contributed to the internationalization of management theory through studies of management, including change management, in East Asia. Subsequently, after 2000 (with colleagues Andrew Griffiths and Suzanne Benn), he developed a comprehensive phase model outlining key stages through which organizations can progress to become both sustainable and sustaining. These models were supported by detailed organizational case studies describing how change programs were undertaken and evaluating the outcomes in terms of a variety of performance criteria. These conceptual developments were responses to major challenges occurring in the environments of organizations subsequent to the end of World War II through to the second decade of the twenty-first century.Dunphy worked with senior executives of corporations, companies, and organizations, in Australia and internationally, in designing large-scale in-house and system-wide change programs. He was involved in training organizational change agents and creating and maintaining active networks of change consultants for the exchange of ideas and approaches. The chapter concludes with an outline of key issues for the future development of the field.

Follett, M. P.The work of Mary Parker Follett, an intellectual pioneer of the early twentieth century, resists categorization or assignment to any one category or field of study. A political and management theorist, Follett proposed a renewed vision of participative democracy as she anticipated the future practice of conflict mediation and of management as a profession.Follett’s work, rooted in her integrative philosophy of addressing conflict and problems, is particularly and perennially relevant to managing change. The following chapter first presents the profound influences of Follett’s academic, personal, and professional experiences in shaping her perspectives. We then delve into what we view as Follett’s most important, enduring contributions to management study and practice – integration and circular response – as a paradigm for managing change. We highlight different contexts in which Follett has translated her integrative philosophy into practical concepts, such as power-with management, the law of the situation, the invisible leader and the common purpose, and circular behavior as the basis of integration. We will conclude this collective reflection by illustrating how Follett’s legacy is unfinished; her ideas endure and are relevant even today in governing our period of complexity and interdependent challenges. Follett still shows the way.

Ford, J. D.In an academic career spanning over 40 years, Jeffrey Ford has repeatedly questioned taken-for-granted truths or recognized something so obvious it begs further thought and study. Seminal contributions on change management from the second period of his career (starting in 1989) are the focus of this chapter. Management, networks, and conversations are the commonalities of his scholarship, and each is evident in a body of work that enhances our understanding of intentional change management through his scholarly contributions – with his wife, Laurie Ford – on the logics of change, the role of conversations in producing intentional change, and the resistance to change. For managers and leaders, Ford’s work continues to focus our attention as scholars and practitioners on the ongoing day-to-day efforts to bring about organizational change.

Jay Galbraith was the leading scholar and practitioner in the field of organization design. His early work focused on the amount, type, and complexity of information that an organization needed to process in order to get work done. Galbraith’s information-processing model of organization design was influential among academic circles and became widely used in the corporate arena. In addition, he developed key concepts such as organization design as a prescriptive model, equifinality, strategy implementation the Star Model™ framework of organization design, the front-back organization, and lateral forms of organization – all of which are used today in the organization change process. Galbraith was unique among his academic colleagues in that his research derived primarily from the clients he advised. His gift was a rare ability to synthesize information and distill it down to useful and repeatable solutions to complex organizational challenges.

As a major contributor to the field of organization development and change, Robert T. Golembiewski was a perfectionist who drove himself and others to achieve their best. Although interaction with him was often tinged with tough criticism, going beyond his gruff exterior was a caring man with a wonderful sense of humor. He had the ability to write quickly with precision that got directly to the point he wanted to make in a colloquial style. For those of us fortunate to work with him, his sharp mind and prolific writing kept us busy reading and thinking about the past, present, and future direction of the field. Bob influenced all of us who knew him – and countless others who never met him – through his copious articles and books. This chapter will discuss his influences and motivations to enter the OD field, his key contributions – his intervention in the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), his work on burnout and stress, and his insights into the ramifications of different types of change – and how his work has influenced others. Emphasis will also be placed on the legacy he left behind, with suggestions for additional reading that will help the reader learn more about this prolific scholar and why he is considered a thought leader in organization development and change.

As a significant contributor to the field of organizational intervention and change, Larry E. Greiner was one of those unique individuals who personified a mixture of insight and intelligence with a fun-filled spirit, a warm and welcoming presence, and, in general, a guiding sense of commitment and generosity. Over the years, his work reflected the essence of actionable knowledge, taking an applied route to knowledge creation, generation, and dissemination. He had a compelling presence that literally drew people to him, bringing a smile to their faces while lending his insights and expertise to all those who entered his orbit. This chapter captures the influences and motivations that led him to the organization development (OD) field, his key contributions – the stages of evolution and revolution that organizations experience, the role and nature of management consulting and intervention, power and OD, and dynamic strategy – and how that work has influenced others. As close colleagues and friends, we were privileged to know and work with him, and his ideas, support, and presence have had a lasting effect on our lives.

Björn Gustavsen, with an original professional background as a lawyer and judge in his native Norway, has had a formative role in organizational development processes in Norway, Sweden, Scandinavia, and the European Union over four decades. Following in the tradition of Norwegian working life research by Trist and Thorsrud, he has provided the conceptual framework and practical case studies which have driven major national and international programs. He has learned from different experience of organizational change in, for example, the USA and Japan, but he has identified a distinctive way forward for the European Union, where he has acted as a senior adviser. In contrast to conventional Taylorist top-down management and reliance on expert consultants, his approach has been bottom-up and concept driven, with a focus on empowering workers. With a commitment to long-term sustainable processes, he has emphasized the importance of capacity building and succession planning, highlighting development organizations. His approach to partnership and coalition building has enabled collaboration across sectors, in the cause of creating collaborative advantage. He has a distinctive fluent academic writing style, but spends most of his time engaged in the design and practice of development, and editing the work of younger colleagues. He has seen the role of academic journals and edited books in the development process, so has encouraged new publications, but without seeking to dominate. He took ideas of action research and case studies and applied them to national enterprise development programs, working with the labor market parties. This has resulted in a distinctive research and development culture.

Armand Hatchuel’s work marks a turning point in management research and paves the way for a refoundation of management science. Hatchuel’s research deals with organizational metabolism rather than organizational change, as he is concerned with the drivers of change and with the organization of innovative collective action. Several theoretical milestones can be put forward. First, Hatchuel offers a theory of the cognitive processes of generativity: while decision theory targets optimization by supporting the selection of a solution, “C-K theory” is a design theory. It accounts for the generation of new alternatives by expanding what is known, this process being driven by desirable unknowns. This theory has provided the theoretical cornerstone characterizing the rationality and organization of innovative or design-oriented collective action. Second, in Hatchuel’s view, learning and organizational dynamics are tightly bound. Learning processes are hosted and supported by social relationships, which, in turn, are shaped by the distribution of knowledge. Hatchuel proposes a theory of collective action whereby knowledge and relationships are involved in a dynamic interplay: this theory shows that both markets and hierarchies are special and highly unstable forms of organization, because they imply that either knowledge or relationships are frozen. Management scholars contribute to the study of generative forms of collective action: Hatchuel argues that management science, far from being applied economics or applied sociology, is a basic science devoted to the design and study of new models of collective action. He therefore opens up promising avenues for programs on post-decision paradigms and creative institutions.

Heracleous, L.Loizos Heracleous holds a Chair in Strategy and Organization at Warwick Business School and is also an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College and the Saïd Business School at Oxford University. His work over the years aims to uncover how organizations change, adapt, and evolve overtime, with particular reference to how individuals interpret and frame strategic issues. One of his most prominent contributions is linking organizational change and development with a number of perspectives and themes in strategy and organization, such as organizational discourse and ambidexterity. Heracleous’ body of work contributes to fundamental questions around organizations, such as what elements influence organizational change and development processes? What is the role of organizational discourse, metaphor, dialogue, culture, and learning? How can organizations implement dual strategies that contain elements that are in mutual tension? In order to answer these questions, Heracleous brings forward an interpretive hermeneutic approach to theory and methodology and uncovers underlying aspects of organizational change and development through different theoretical lenses: discourse theory, structuration theory, paradox theory, institutional theory, and strategy as practice.

Strategy execution is a challenging organizational process that intertwines structural, economic, and social processes. Quy Huy’s work has increased our understanding of the social dynamics in this context. In particular, his work has described how managers in various different roles perceive organizational events differently, feel different emotions, and take various kinds of actions to promote organizational change. Their emotional reactions, subsequent behaviors, and the feedback loops between various people’s emotions and actions ultimately influence organizational outcomes in ways that Quy’s research has explicated. He has thus increased our understanding of change processes and also provided practical advice on how executives can better lead the execution of their strategies.

Elliot Jaques’ body of work spans over five decades and profoundly shaped the discourse in organizational development and change through his demand for precise definitions and scientific research to advance our ideas of human behavior and social institutions. He authored twenty books and published across a wide range of discipline journals but more notably constantly remained engaged in consultancy research with organizations from a developmental perspective seeking to help build their capacity to be more effective. His cross-discipline training in medicine, psychology, sociology, economics, psychoanalysis, and social sciences shaped his perspective and contribution to the field of organizational development. The primary puzzle of practice he sought to resolve focused on organizational design and the extent to which organizations are stratified to match the level of work commensurate with cognitive capabilities of the managers accountable for the work out of that level. A Canadian-born psychoanalyst, Elliott Jaques started his educational training with a BA from the University of Toronto in 1937, then an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1941, and a PhD in Social Relations from Harvard University in 1952. He held several positions within research and higher education institutes, starting as the first project leader for Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, founder and head of the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University and research center, emeritus research professor in Management Sciences at George Washington University, honorary professor of Buenos Aires University, emeritus professor at Brunel University, and founder of Cason Hall Publishing with his wife Kathryn. He was honored with several awards, to include Consulting Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, Joint Chief of Staff of the US Armed Services, and General Colin Powell recognition for “outstanding contribution in the field of military leadership.” Jaques cited as one of the most undeservedly ignored management researchers of the Modern era. Elliot Jaques died March 8, 2003 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA – still productively engaged in his consultancy research and in developing useful concepts for organizations.

As a key contributor to the field of organization development and diversity, the legacy of Kaleel Jamison continues on in her writing, through her impact on her colleagues, clients, and friends and the work of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group. Kaleel spent much of her working life as “one of the first” and “one of the few” in many areas. During the early 1970s, she became one of the first to address differences of color and race in the workplace, consulting with such organizations as Procter and Gamble, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, and Digital Equipment Company. Kaleel was a pioneer in applying organization development technology to affirmative action and issues of differences; she outlined her thinking in the article “Affirmative Action Program: Springboard for a Total Organizational Change Effort” for OD Practitioner. In 1983, her “Managing Sexual Attraction in the Workplace” appeared in the August issue of Personnel Administrator, making her among the first management consultants to address attraction as a workplace issue. Kaleel expanded the scope of this work beyond the classroom to position it as a system-wide issue, rooted not just in individual skills and attitudes but in organizational policies, practices, and managerial methods. In addition to being a pioneer on issues of gender, race, affirmative action, and differences, she was also one of the first and few women to work as a management consultant. Shortly before dying of cancer in 1985, Kaleel published a book, The Nibble Theory and the Kernel of Power, which summarized many of her views on human relations and personal development.

At first glance, Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s approach to change appears as eclectic, ranging from the study of utopian communities to corporations, non-profits, and governments to ecosystems. But look closer and there is a deeper coherence. Behind the witty turns of phrase, digestible frameworks, and punchy action lists lay theoretical subtlety and complexity. Kanter is a trained sociologist, who seeks to understand the structural determinants of individual behavior. She melds the sensibility of symbolic interactionism, and its emphasis on fieldwork, with attention to how structural relations, especially power, constitute social systems. Her mode and method are evident in her early work and, though later made less explicit, remain throughout. As such, she may be best understood, to borrow one of her phrases, as a kaleidoscopic thinker. She seeks to identify patterns and understand how people and elements relate, combine, and recombine in multiple ways and in multiple contexts to form new patterns. She then shares with leaders and citizens the emerging possibilities and suggests how to get there. Kanter thus does not study change for change’s sake – she links it to a utopian search for perfectibility.

This chapter is based on the pioneering work of Judith H. Katz, Ed.D. in systems change to address issues of racism and social justice and infuse organization development with these concepts to build inclusive organizations. The author describes Katz’s research, methodology, models, teaching, and client consultations in the field of applied behavioral science (ABS). The author reflects on implications and impact of Katz’s legacy, on future organization development practitioners, and the discourse on the role of organization development as a catalyst for racial and social justice.

Manfred Kets de Vries has brought a unique form of humanistic and scientific thinking to the forces of organizational change. Early in his career, Prof. Kets de Vries argued that in order to survive and change, people in organizations must uncover and deal with human dynamics such as the anxiety or resistance of individuals, combined with such organizational forces as cultural code, embedded response patterns, and unhealthy adaptations to external pressures. In the early 1970s, this was an unorthodox point of view. Fast forward to a new century, and we see that thanks in part to Kets de Vries’ contribution, we have experienced a paradigm shift. Bringing human beings, with all their inherent messiness, into the organizational change equation is no longer heretical. If such thinking has become more acceptable today, it is because pioneering academics were able to challenge the limits of the rational, management science approach to organizational change.This chapter addresses the early experiences and later influences that shaped the career of Manfred Kets de Vries, by putting him, metaphorically, on the psychoanalyst’s couch.

Studies of organizational change and leadership often include, if not begin with, the works of John Kotter, Ph.D., professor emeritus of Harvard Business School. Kotter focuses almost exclusively on management practitioners, rather than scholars, and uses parables, stories, and case studies to teach the learnings he has gained through observing what successful managers actually do, rather than what they should do. Kotter’s Harvard Business Review article, Leading Change, Why Transformation Efforts Fail (1995), is widely considered to be a seminal work and precursor of the change management domain. The eight mistakes which Kotter postulated came to be known as the eight-step model for implementing organizational changes. Kotter’s large body of work on the eight-steps is bookended by his work differentiating management and leadership. Kotter argues managers rely on hierarchy to produce consistency and order, whereas leaders utilize networks of relationships to produce change. In summary, those readers who are interested in pursuing excellence, rather than convention, and in learning from stories and real-world examples, rather than theories, may benefit most from Kotter’s work.

Edward Emmett Lawler, III, has been a central figure in the development of the fields of organizational behavior, management, and organization development. His early work generated and tested theoretical frameworks about motivation and performance, and he was a leader in investigating how organizational practices impact employee and organizational outcomes, including work design, compensation, performance management, and participation and involvement. The Quality of Worklife studies at the University of Michigan that he co-led with Stan Seashore provided a model and developed a methodology for studying and understanding organizations as dynamic systems and for creating knowledge about organizations by intentionally changing them. From this work, he developed his highly influential high-involvement management framework.During a career that has spanned 50 years, he has influenced both the theory and practice of organizing for effectiveness during a period when organizations have had to change fundamentally to adapt to the emerging dynamic, digitalized, global economy. Lawler has been a scholar of how organizations are changing to be effective in their changing contexts more than he has been a scholar of change processes. His emphasis on doing useful research led to partnerships with companies to address and learn from the challenges they face and to ensuring that the knowledge created is accessible to both academia and practice. His work has helped shape the development and increasing strategic orientation of the human resource function. He founded and for almost 40 years has led the Center for Effective Organizations (CEO), a research center at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, which he designed to carry out useful research. He and his colleagues at CEO have contributed to the development of methodologies for doing useful research and to the debates in the Academy about the legitimacy of such approaches.This chapter describes Lawler’s evolution as a scholar, the many contributions that he has made to the understanding of how organizations can change to be more effective, and the immense impact he has had on practice and academia.

Lawrence, P. R.Paul R. Lawrence was one of the earliest and most influential figures in the emergence of organizational behavior as a field of study. He was a pioneer in creating a body of work on organization design, leadership, and change in both the private and public sectors. Lawrence’s professional work was rooted in an aspiration to do work that was rigorous, relevant to practicing managers, and of service to society. Beyond his research, Lawrence was committed to building the field of organizational behavior at HBS and more broadly in our profession. He had a lifelong passion for participant-centered learning and for the training of doctoral students.

Few social scientists can have received the level of praise and admiration that has been heaped upon Kurt Lewin. Edward Tolman, one of the most distinguished psychologists of his day, put his contribution to psychology on a par with that of Sigmund Freud (Tolman, Psychological Review 55:1–4, 1948). The distinguished scholar Edgar Schein (Organizational psychology, 3rd edn. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p 239, 1988) called Lewin “the intellectual father of contemporary theories of applied behavioural science.” Recently, the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (Foreword. E Shafir: The behavioral foundations of public policy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, p viii, 2013) declared that “We are all Lewinians now.” Tributes such as these, from such distinguished figures, show that Lewin made an outstanding and enduring contribution to the field of psychology. He is now best known for his work in the field of organizational change, but, as this chapter will show, he had a wider agenda aimed at resolving social conflict. Among the main factors that influenced and motivated his work were his application of Gestalt psychology to child psychology and the impact of the anti-Semitism he encountered growing up and working in Germany. On moving to the USA, he gravitated from studying child psychology in the laboratory to bringing about social and organizational change in the real world. His key contributions were the creation of planned change, his work on participative management, and countering religious and racial discrimination. He was also responsible for establishing important institutions, such as the National Training Laboratories and the Research Center for Group Dynamics. Lewin’s lasting legacy consists not just of his groundbreaking scholarly work but also of his example as a “practical theorist” who wanted to make the world a better place.

Ron Lippitt, an innovator throughout his distinguished career, was one of the founders of group dynamics and the “T-group” (sensitivity group), a cofounder of the National Training Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and again later was a cofounder of the Center on the Research for the Utilization of Scientific Knowledge at the University of Michigan. A pioneer in the development of experimental social psychology, he is renowned for his classic work on the effects of democratic, autocratic and laissez faire leadership of small groups, and for his later work on planned change. Throughout his life, he demonstrated the power of controlled research in natural settings, creating scientific foundations for small group, organizational and societal change. His hundreds of writings span articles, chapters, and books that contribute his insights and methods to resolve organizational and social problems. He leaves behind a rich legacy for researchers, consultants, organizational and societal leaders, and students.

Lorsch, J. W.businessThe contributions of Jay W. Lorsch, the Louis Kirstein Professor of Human Relations at the Harvard Business School to the fields of organizational change and organizational behavior, are far reaching and fundamental. He has written and edited 19 books (currently writing twentieth), and the list contains critical pieces including Organization and Environment (with Paul Lawrence) that won the Academy of Management’s Book of the Year Award in 1969 and was reissued as a Harvard Business School Classic in 1986. The book is listed at number 6 among the 25 most influential books on management of the twentieth century, which include the works of giants like Frederick Taylor, Max Weber, Abraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor, and Peter Drucker. In addition, he has published dozens of articles and contributed scores of case studies to academia. Jay Lorsch has taught in all Harvard Business School’s educational programs and chaired the doctoral program as well as countless other units and initiatives at Harvard. He has also acted as a consultant to Citicorp, Deloitte Touche, Goldman Sachs, and many others, and his research on and work with corporate boardrooms has changed the very nature in which they construct, function, and assess themselves. Lorsch was elected to the Corporate Governance Hall of Fame of the highly respected industry magazine Directorship in 2009. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Antioch College and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

This chapter addresses the key contributions, insights, and legacies of Robert J. “Bob” Marshak to the field of organization development and change. The narrative opens with a discussion of the concepts, individuals, and institutions (US Army, American University, NTL, and US Department of Agriculture) that influenced his early career, honed his curiosity, and shaped his world view. The chapter highlights his pattern of perceiving change as a cognitive, linguistic construct and his exploration of the impact of language, symbolism, metaphors, and mindsets on how we think about change. Through his writings, Marshak poses critical questions, stimulates controversy, and challenges our beliefs and assumptions about how we think about what constitutes organizational change; for example, in an early article he contrasts our traditional Lewinian, Western perspectives on change with an unfamiliar Confucian, Eastern perspective of change. The chapter highlights his collaborations: in the 1980s and 1990s, he and cocreator Judith Katz explore the hidden dimension of change, creating the “Covert Process Model™”; in the 1990s and 2000s, he collaborates with numerous other scholars on articles and book chapters in the burgeoning field of organizational discourse studies; and in the 2000s and 2010s, he collaborates with Gervase Bushe with articles that explore the distinctions between classical OD (Diagnostic OD) and a new, emergent form of OD (Dialogic OD), culminating in a paradigm shifting book on Dialogic OD. The chapter concludes with a themed list of Marshak’s most influential writings.

A field in the social and organizational science grows in richness of perspective, methods, and tools, the same way a field in the hard sciences does: new ideas emerge from the rich conversation of the members. Sometimes, a rich flow of ideas emerges from a special subgroup, such as collaborative partnerships. This chapter focuses on such a partnership: the 30-year collaboration of doctors Victoria MarsickMarsick, V. and Karen WatkinsWatkins, K.. It is a story of discovering new ways to view learninglearning in the workplace, but it did not start with that focus. The content of our chapter is based on interviews with Marsick and Watkins, K.Watkins and with seven of their colleagues, who read much of their work and related material and interacted with them for several decades. Interviews included former students, colleagues, coauthors, and fellow board members for the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD)Association for Talent Development (ATD, formerly ASTD) and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). Those individuals had known the two scholars 15–25 years.

This biography covers the life and contributions of one of the most significant contributors to management and organizational thinking. Douglas McGregor set the stage for a new wave of management with his Theory Y managerial assumptions. McGregor’s work influenced a generation of scholars and practitioners who changed the practice of management and created the foundation for the twenty-first century of management thinking. This chapter presents and discusses the forces that influenced and motivated McGregor’s thinking. It reviews McGregor’s basic contributions particularly his best-known contribution of Theory X and Theory Y. In addition, it reviews McGregor’s key insights and their impact on theory and practice that have led to organizational change being viewed in new and surprising ways. Finally, a discussion of McGregor’s legacies, unfinished business, and further readings is provided.

Miller, E. J.This chapter traces Eric Miller’s early career from social anthropologist in industry through four decades as a second-generation social scientist for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR). We assert that each decade can be understood as emphasizing one of Eric’s contributions within four categories that sustain our field today. (1) Systems of Organization (Miller and Rice 1967) stands as a seminal contribution to organizational theory and work organization design. Not only does Eric’s original research with Ken RiceRice, A. K. in Indian weaving sheds embody the emerging principles of socio-technical systems, but their ideas about boundaries, levels of analysis, representational meetings, and differentiation between subsystems led to extending systems thinking into other sectors. (2) Eric’s extensive action research shaped social policies in a range of “people processing institutions”: for example, geriatric and psychiatric hospitals; the education, treatment, and support of people with disabilities; and role changes for nurses, occupational health specialists, and wives in diplomatic service. His “working notes” and “working hypotheses” technique helps outsiders and insiders to mutually negotiate action, bringing together organizational development with action research. (3) By his third decade at TIHR, Miller demonstrated explicit concern with systems change and societal analysis, applying social science for social problems (e.g., workers’ strikes, relations between immigrant communities); he began using cross-boundary developments that required both systems design and psychodynamic interpretation (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, a Mexican water system). An outcome of this concern was an Organization for the Promotion of Understanding of Society (OPUS). (4) While Eric directed TIHR’s group relations and experiential learning offerings from 1970, he emphasized that culturally appropriate dissemination needed to be led by people within their own countries. Thus, while avoiding hero worship, Miller encouraged the formation of two dozen institutions scattered around the world, each identifying somehow with Tavistock schools of thought.

Frederick A. Miller has contributed to the theory and practice of organization change by challenging and reframing how organizations understand and leverage differences to create inclusive workplaces. With Judith H. Katz, he published the first comprehensive model and framework for implementing diversity and inclusion as a lever for strategic culture change, moving diversity from a compliance-driven set of programs to a breakthrough OD strategy linked to higher operational and bottom-line performance. Miller came of age during a period heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, which significantly shaped his vision not only of what society could be but also of the role organizations needed to play in moving society toward a greater equality of opportunity and participation. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to pushing back on the status quo to help change organizations into places where human beings can be fully human and where each person can grow, do their best work, and have a meaningful experience. Many of Miller’s insights come from observing and learning from his clients, engaging with peers on corporate and not-for-profit boards, and studying what is happening in the world. In collaboration with Katz and others in his firm, he has developed several simple models and practical tools and processes that make it easier for clients to move toward a workplace in which people can do their best work in service of the organizational mission, vision, and strategic objectives. Miller believes that, fundamentally, organizations are only as productive as the interactions between people. Significant organizational change for today’s organizations requires an adjustment in the quality of interactions between people. Conscious Actions for Inclusion is a tool that provides a set of behaviors communicated in simple, common language that opens the door to greater clarity and enhanced ways of interacting.

This chapter explores the distinctive contributions of Phil Mirvis, an organizational psychologist who has skillfully fused radical humanism and organizational spirituality in what can be best described as a boundaryless career. The boundaryless label captures the character of his contributions that defy categorization as they seamlessly weave together theoretical imagination, research-oriented creativity, and practical ingenuity while integrating multiple epistemologies and methods, including within his ambit individual, group, and societal levels of functioning, in addition to attending to both the tangible and intangible dimensions of organizational functioning. After reviewing some dominant influences and defining moments that shaped his career, the chapter explores Mirvis’s contributions in five thematic dimensions of organizational life, namely (a) large-scale organizational change, (b) mergers and acquisitions, (c) the character of the workforce and workplace, (d) leadership development, and (e) the role of business in society. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Mirvis’s key insights and legacies that include but are not limited to his work on failures in OD work as opportunities for new understandings, his elaboration of learning journeys as an instrument of promoting emotional and spiritual self-actualization in business contexts and his amplification of the compatibility of organizational cultures as a determinant of success in mergers and acquisitions.Mirvis, P.H.

Dr. Susan Albers Mohrman is a senior research scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations (CEO) at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Many consider her to be a giant in the field of organization development and change (ODC) with her independent and joint contributions with other luminous colleagues from CEO such as Edward Lawler, Allan “Monty” Mohrman, Susan Cohen, and Christopher WorleyWorley, C.. Mohrman has made several path-defining contributions during her illustrious and continuing 38-plus-year career at CEO. These contributions touch on multiple aspects of the field – teams, leadership, organizational design, organizational growth and development, rigorous research, theory development, useful research, and the cultivation of the future generation of scholar-practitioners.Several core themes unite these diverse aspects. One integrative theme is her deep respect for and dedication to the constructive role that organizations can play in the lives of their members and the communities in which they are located. Another integrative theme is the need to build organizations that meet the multiple hurdles of effectiveness, efficiency, meaningfulness, and significance. A third is the multivocality of organizational expertise that rest in scholars, organizational leaders, employees, and other stakeholders. A fourth integrative theme is the persistent quest for models (and theories) of organizational functioning that better explain desired outcomes. As we reflect upon Dr. Mohrman’s contributions, legacy, and unfinished business we are inspired to hold fast to the values of human dignity, meaningful work, sustainability, and scientific empiricism as we continue to cultivate powerful agents of change who fulfill the promise of the field of ODC.

David Nadler was a scholar-turned-practitioner who left his mark on the field of organization development through his work with CEOs and his writing about organizational diagnosis, data feedback, organization design, transformation, and boards. The consulting firm he created, Delta Consulting, was the premier firm specializing in consulting to CEOs on matters related to their personal and organizational effectiveness. He is perhaps best remembered for creating, along with Michael Tushman, the congruence model, which serves as a guide for organizational diagnosis and design. However, his greatest impact was on those who knew him as clients, associates, and friends.

Jean Neumann is senior fellow in scholarly practice at The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), London. She works as both a practitioner and academic in the field of organizational change and development and provides professional advice and development to managers, leaders, consultants, and other organizational change practitioners. Her work is focused on integrating theory and practice to develop more realistic and sensible approaches to the organizational change. While the academy is still accustomed to split theory and practice, research, and action, Jean Neumann’s contribution stresses the intimate and profound connection between them; as she demonstrates through her consultancy practice, it is not enough to try to explain things (as the traditional research methods do); the challenge is also to try to change them within a process of understanding and inquiry that involves all members of a given social system. In this sense, her (systemic) consultancy model for organizational change and development offers a learning architecture for a change process that challenges complex issues and supports participative solutions to entrenched problems enabling people to work with uncertainty.

Debra A. Noumair is Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Founding Director of the college’s Executive Masters Program in Change Leadership. A contemporary leading voice in organization change and development, Dr. Noumair’s key intellectual contributions can be found in her work applying psychodynamic and systems theories to group and organizational behavior. This chapter reviews her intellectual contributions to change research, theory, and practice, including the application of group relations to organizational settings, the integration of group relations and organization development, the creation of a systems psychodynamic framework for organizational consultation, and the development of executive education in leading and managing change. The chapter also reviews the early influences and motivations that led to her career as an organizational psychologist, as well as the impact of her teaching, writing, and professional practice on thousands of students, clients, and colleagues over the last two decades. The earliest outlines of her intellectual legacy in the field are also considered.

Shaul Oreg contributes to contemporary thinking in organizational change research in significant ways. In his early research, Shaul established the construct of dispositional resistance to change, which captures affective, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of individuals’ personal orientation toward change. Building on this work, Shaul shows that dispositional resistance to change predicts reactions to specific change, which are subsequently related to individual- and work-related outcomes. Overall, his research provides an in-depth view of reactions to change and an integrative approach to understanding the antecedents and consequences of these reactions. Through the holistic approach that characterizes his research, Shaul is able to uncover nuances at play in the interactions between individual and contextual factors and, thus, contributes to a better understanding of the complexity involved in recipients’ responses to change. This chapter describes Shaul’s personal background and motivation for this line of research, discusses the key contributions of his research and how it impacted other scholars, and outlines his future research trajectory.

William “Bill” A. Pasmore’s journey to date is all about the joy of navigating between academy and industry. Since completing his B.S.I.M at Purdue University in 1973, he held positions and had appointments in both universities and firms. As this chapter is written, Bill holds a professor of practice, organization, and leadership appointment at Teachers College, Columbia University, and senior vice president and advisor to CEOs, boards, and executive team position at the Center for Creative Leadership. Bill is recognized by scholars and practitioners alike for his continuous contributions. His contributions during the past four decades to the field of organizational science, applied behavioral science, and managerial practice are both extensive and deep. The first book that he co-edited with Jack Sherwood Sociotechnical Systems: A Sourcebook (1978) was one of the first books to clearly define the field of sociotechnical systems. In 1988 and 1994 he further advanced his contribution to sociotechnical system theory and practice by completing two books titled Designing Effective Organization: The Sociotechnical System Perspective and Creating Strategic Change: Designing the Flexible Hugh-Performing Organization. The annual volumes Research in Organization Change and Research that were co-edited by Bill and Dick Woodman (the first volume was published in 1987) established a special platform for scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners to share new thought-provoking research-based insights that continue today (with Volume 25 planned to be published in 2017). He continued his contribution by serving as the editor for the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2011–2016. Bill has devoted the last forty years to studying change, assisting with change, and leading change in organizations as a scholar-practitioner. This manuscript captures Bill’s past and present trajectory with some promising future milestones as he continues to navigate in the borderland of academy and industry.

Pettigrew, A. W.This chapter positions Andrew Pettigrew as a process scholar. It describes his work of catching “reality in flight” as he investigated the continuity and change, which is involved in subject areas like the politics of organizational decision-making, organizational culture, fundamental strategic change, human resource management, competitiveness, the workings of boards of directors, and new organizational forms. The chapter also describes the research methodology of contextualism that Andrew Pettigrew developed to capture “reality in flight.” It discusses the extent to which Andrew Pettigrew succeeded and how his research program could be developed further.

Marshall Scott Poole’s research on processes of organizational change has been influential across multiple fields. Few scholars have drawn inspiration from such interdisciplinary sources and had such impact across various disciplines. For four decades, he has developed metatheoretical approaches, specific theories, and novel over a career of nearly methodologies for studying the process of organizational change. His work on group decision development, technology use, and virtual organizing has opened up new lines of inquiry for organizational researchers. In his current work, Poole continues to demonstrate that change is not something that happens to organizations, but rather that by their very nature organizations are continuously changing.

Motivated by her father at an early age to be her best, Joanne C. Preston has emerged on the forefront as a scholar-practitioner in her quest to “make the workplace healthier.” Building on her Russian, French, and German language skills and her solid foundation in developmental psychology, she has pushed the boundaries of traditional organization development and change (ODC). Preston has taken the best of family therapy practice and applied its interventions to small business and workplace problems, producing results sufficiently substantial to catch the attention of international business owners. Her interventions in large systems change and her astute ability to create superordinate goals were instrumental in South Africa’s transformation from apartheid and in Poland’s change from communism to a free market society. Her work with governmental leaders has improved Kenya’s educational system. On the home front, Preston has introduced an international dimension to ODC education. She has cut across the typical discipline boundaries of psychology, business, and education and, by using technology, she has created new models of education for graduate students, linking global teams in workplace settings. Similarly, she has been influential in the creation of new types of business and professional network organizations. Preston has the rare gift of blending theory into practice on six continents, affecting academic audiences, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governments.

This chapter focuses on the work of Robert E. Quinn. He has devoted his professional and personal life to developing himself and others into understanding what it means to be an inspiring change agent. From his life lessons as a child to his unconventional insights as a college student to his work in church life, and especially in his scholarship, Quinn has used key life experiences to learn and grow. Every step of the way, he has sought to understand, document, and ignite transformational experiences. In this way, he is an exemplary applied behavioral scientist, continually integrating scholarship and practice. Quinn’s major contributions include (1) the development of the competing values model which embraces the role of tension and paradox to understand organizational life, (2) articulating the essential role of self-empowerment in inspiring positive change, and (3) challenging the assumption that leadership is less about having a position of authority and more about having a mind-set (the fundamental state of leadership). In the last decade, Quinn has brought these different contributions together as a cofounder of a new field of organizational studies, named positive organizational scholarship, which focuses on the science for bringing out the very best in organizations, teams, and individuals. Quinn’s contributions extend beyond these content areas as he is also a masterful teacher and mentor who helps others envision their full potential. For all of these reasons, Quinn’s personal vision to inspire positive change has been fulfilled on many dimensions.

Revans, R.This chapter describes the philosophy and approach of Reginald RevansRevans, R.action learning (1907–2003), a UK scientist and educational innovator. It traces the influences on his thinking, from his early imbibing of Christian and Quaker traditions to the later impact of world philosophies especially including Buddhism. His contribution to our understanding of change management processes gives a central place to learning, both personal and institutional. Revans’ approach emphasizes the practical and moral significance of personal involvement in action and learning, as a means of resolving the intractable social and organizational problems that we find around us. Over a long life, Revans was ceaselessly active in testing his ideas which were always in a state of emergence. He leaves a rich heritage of proposals and possibilities for present practitioners. Five of the legacies of his work are discussed in this paper: Virtual Action Learning, Critical Action Learning, The Wicked Problems of Leadership, Unlearning, and the Paradox of Innovation.

Claus Otto Scharmer has dedicated his life work to helping individuals and institutions collaboratively shape the emerging future for the healing of the whole – a process that unfolds through collective inquiry, holistic knowing, and co-creativity. Beginning with the question “why do our systems produce results that no one is happy with?,” Scharmer has integrated systems thinking, action research, phenomenology, and inner awareness into a multidimensional matrix of processes and practices called Theory U. As a social technology, Theory U facilitates a shift in individual and collective awareness of the systems and social fields in which we are embedded. The resulting collective shift in awareness fosters collaborative action for systems change motivated by a shared sense of higher purpose.Otto ScharmerScharmer, C. O.Theory UTheory U has applied Theory U not only to systems change in teams, organizations, and institutions but also to addressing the major economic, ecological, and cultural schisms threatening the future of our planet today. Scharmer’s work will likely be remembered for its guidance in the transition to a new epoch of spiritual openness, organizational fluidity, and social transformation. Theory U is more than an intervention tool – it is a way of being and doing in organizational life. Today this way of being and doing is an imperative, not only to address intensifying fundamentalism but to build the foundation of the next epoch that is already emerging.Dr. Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at MIT, a Thousand Talents Program Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a cofounder of the Presencing Institute.

Edgar H. Schein’s contributions to the field of organizational studies are far reaching. He was one of the first to formulate the field of organizational psychology in 1965, and he led the development of the field of organization development (OD) through his editorship of the pioneering Addison-Wesley OD series in 1969. He framed a philosophy of being helpful through process consultation and humble inquiry, articulated the experience of the organizational career, and framed a model of organizational culture and how it operates in complex systems.

Donald Schön was a deeply original thinker working on change, education, design, and learning. He is perhaps best known for his work on the reflective practitioner, in which he formulated a new epistemology of practice founded on knowing-in-action and reflection-in-action, a theory which has had considerable impact. He also made huge contributions to the field of organizational learning, working with Chris Argyris on theories in action and on single/double loop learning. Underlying all these contributions was a theory of change grounded in Dewey’s theory of inquiry and deeply concerned with how institutions and professionals deal with a world beyond the stable state. An educator as well as a theorist and practitioner, Schön was highly interested in how professionals can be taught in ways that reflect the reality in which they work rather than the traditional forms of technical rationality. This chapter examines Schön’s key contributions, the influence of philosophy and music upon his work, and the many ways his work has been used.

Edie Seashore was a protégé of Douglas McGregor and a pioneer in the small group dynamics training movement that emerged from the work of Kurt Lewin (founder of the field of social psychology) and developed by the National Training Institute (NTL) at its summer campus at Bethel, Maine. She led the movement that integrated NTL and became its first woman president. NTL also created the first OD training program for consultants. During her more than 60 years as an independent consultant, she founded the American University master’s degree program in OD (with Morley Segal) and taught in many of the other OD graduate degree programs in the United States. She had a profound influence on the hundreds of OD consultants that she taught and trained. She believed that diversity and inclusion were central values in OD practice. She embodied this value in her work and life. Seashore wrote one of the earliest articles on gender in the workplace. As a gifted practitioner, she believed that taking action produced data that led to effective interventions. She emphasized the use of self as critical to effective practice. Her choice awareness matrix helped practitioners interact with clients effectively, learn from the situation, and take next steps. Her wonderful sense of humor and deep practitioner insight helped many OD consultants over many years.

Peter M. Senge is an author, organizational consultant, and systems thinker whose writings and workshops have influenced scholars and managers around the world. From his base at MIT in what was originally the Organizational Learning Center, which became the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), Senge has contributed to a fundamental shift in the way that many look at the nature and scale of change. His initial book, The Fifth Discipline, brought together practices for generating the inner shift in awareness that he originally termed metanoia, from the ancient Christian term for movement of mind or awakening, supporting people in developing practical, interlinked capacities to reflect, learn together, and think systemically about how to have sustainable organizations in a sustainable world. His writings and collaborative work with leaders in schools, not-for-profit organizations, and corporations continue to contribute to organizational and societal evolution.

Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, a professor of management and organization behavior at the Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is a recognized scholar in the organization development and change field. The first book that he coauthored with Gervase Bushe, a pioneering articulation of parallel learning structure theory in the Addison-Wesley Organization Development Series, was written at a time when the rapidly growing field was not well understood or well-defined. The book, Parallel Learning Structures: Increasing Innovation in Bureaucracies, was hailed by Richard Beckhard and Edgar Schein as “a seminal theory of large-scale organization change based on the institution of parallel systems as change agents.” The book has been widely quoted in contemporary times in line with new attention to diverse learning mechanisms within the field of organization design. As of this writing, Rami continues to publish and serve as an editor of journal articles, books, and book chapters at a record pace. In 2008, he joined Richard Woodman and William Pasmore in editing the annual volumes of Research in Organizational Change and Development, which establishes a special opportunity for academics and practitioners to share research findings and emerging trends in OD. Over the years, Rami has worked with consultants, scholars, clients, and leaders within the organization development academic community to found the subfield of collaborative management research and to document the evolution of sociotechnical systems theory toward sustainable work systems thinking and the development of new organizational capabilities. The chapter sections below will explore these collaborations and contributions. After a brief look at influences and motivations, the chapter will expand on three contribution categories along with ties to the relevant scholarly literature. It will be noted that beyond a phenomenal publication record and active involvement in organization development research societies and consortiums, Dr. Shani plays a key role in shaping the academic research agenda in action research, collaborative management research, and organization design.

Peter F. Sorensen, PhD, is professor and program chair of the Organization Development and Organizational Behavior Programs at Benedictine University just outside Chicago in Lisle, Ill. This profile contains information that emerged through numerous interviews and document searches. It confirms that Sorensen is still an emerging thinker in the field of organizational change, with his contributions spanning more than 50 years. Sorensen’s background, contributions, and insights are explored, with the intent of aligning his work and background with that of Dr. Kurt Lewin, the father of social psychology. From these sharings, it may be concluded that Sorensen follows a Lewinian approach to life – providing insights to colleagues, removing obstacles in change, exploring the global populations, teaching concepts in social psychology, and influencing students (Lewin, Field theory in social science. New York, Harper & Row, 1952; Marrow, The practical theorist: The life and work of Kurt Lewin. New York, Teachers College Press, 1977). One such student of Sorensen’s is Dr. David Cooperrider, creator of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) who wrote to Sorensen, “The Benedictine OD program you created and have built is so solid and so key to our entire field. You inspired my passion for a field that is becoming increasingly relevant and critical to human being’s lives everywhere.”

Ralph Stacey is one of the pioneers in taking up insights from the complexity sciences in organizational theory. Trained in South Africa and the London School of Economics as a macroeconomist, and latterly as a group therapist, Stacey has combined abstract analytical thinking with an interest in experience, the emotions, a sense of self, and belonging, which make us human. From his interdisciplinary education and experience in industry he has developed a perspective on organizations which combines insights from both the natural and social sciences. This has led to a substantial body of publications with international renown. From the sciences of complexity he argues by analogy that organizations are iterating patterns of human interaction, never in equilibrium, which cannot be controlled by any individual or group. From the social sciences he focuses on the importance of our interdependence, expressed through power relations, and daily conversational activity. Sixteen years ago, and with two close colleagues, he founded a group-based professional doctorate, which runs psychodynamically. The program encourages practicing managers and leaders to focus on their daily experience of managing in uncertainty. In starting this program, he has recreated the best traditions of the Academy dating back to the ancient Greeks, where students and staff engage together in reflective conversation about the things which matter to them, provoking each other to think. Though he is well past retirement age Ralph is still a faculty member, raconteur, and conversationalist, participating in ways which make us all, faculty and students alike, more fully ourselves.

This chapter chronicles Robert Tannenbaum’s life and contributions to organization development and change. Considered one of the founding fathers of OD, Tannenbaum’s shift from accounting to industrial relations marked an increasing emphasis and passion for humanistic psychology. He was a champion for personal growth within a systems perspective, always recognizing the specific situation within which people were embedded. Although his publications on leadership, decision-making, and change were considerable and influential, it was his affirming impact in person – with each individual and audience he met – that defines his legacy in organizational change.

This chapter describes Taylor from a perspective that appears to have been much neglected – his role as a change agent. Throughout his life and career as a manager and management consultant, Taylor worked with organizations to make positive changes, making them better, more efficient, and less reliant on rules of thumb. He changed the notion of the modern organization to one driven and managed by scientific principles. This chapter interprets his work through this lens. It is not intended as a celebration or critique, but rather as an alternative perspective – one that offers or inspires new insights and views on change and on Taylor and his work. The chapter sets out a general introduction before going on to discuss Taylor’s main influences and sources of motivation – what was fueling his thinking and driving his actions? From there, we consider Taylor’s key contributions, or more precisely his key contributions in his role as a very early proponent of change. This leads us on to a new view of Taylor, from which we ask what can be learned from him today; what new insights, if any, does he bring to perspectives on organizational change? In this context, we review examples of his influence in areas that may be surprising to readers. The chapter ends with a discussion of some unresolved issues – unfinished business and harder-to-transfer ideas that must be addressed if we are to truly harness the potential of Taylor’s work and deliberations. The chapter ends with a short list of suggested further reading.

In the field of organization development and change, Dr. Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi is an emergent thinker with contributions to scholarship and practice. Woven throughout the career of this academic and Fulbright senior research scholar is a recurrent theme of dialectical synthesis and boundary expansion along with frequent collaboration across a spectrum of advisors, peers, and doctoral students. Tenkasi’s scholarship has influenced the field with contributions to its understanding of organizational knowledge and communication, scholar-practitioners and the linkage of thought and action, and models of organization development – particularly large-scale change. He continues to expand his own learning and boundaries through immersion in cross-disciplinary methodologies while expanding both the rigor and relevance of our field.

The chapter reviews the scholarly and practical contributions of Tojo Thatchenkery as a concept champion, engaged educator, and passionate practitioner to the discipline of organizational change management. After briefly reviewing some of the dominant influences that have shaped Thatchenkery’s work, the chapter focuses on his contribution (a) as a scholar-practitioner elucidating the construct of Appreciative Intelligence®, (b) as a thought leader and a champion of the social constructionist and hermeneutic perspective on organizations, (c) as a scholar-practitioner generating original, bold, and creative extensions of the appreciative inquiry approach to knowledge management, sustainable value, and economic development, (d) as a champion of multiculturalism and diversity, (e) as an exceptionally creative pedagogic innovator who has fused action learning, sensitivity training, and experiential learning into a graduate program that equips a new generation of organizational development professionals, and finally (f) as an effective and creative consultant with an extensive array of high-powered clients who have benefitted from innovative organizational interventions interweaving elements such as Appreciative Intelligence®, social constructionism, sustainable value, and invisible leadership. The chapter concludes with an exploration of Thatchenkery’s key insights and legacy to the field of organizational change.

Bill Torbert’s career has combined being a leader, teaching leadership, consulting to leaders, and researching leadership. Above all else he has been intent on embodying and explicating what he came to call his “collaborative developmental action inquiry” (CDAI) approach to life, social science, and leadership. CDAI sees every action as an inquiry and every inquiry as an action. That is to say, we are constantly inquiring into the social world and also acting to change that social world. Torbert’s response to this is to suggest a social science that is based in multiplicity. Rather than a single set of practices, he suggests that social science research can have a first-, second-, or third-person research voice; have first-, second-, or third-person practice as its subject; and be about the past, present, or future; with single-, double-, or triple-loop feedback. CDAI represents a different paradigm that holds that the primary aim of social science research is to generate moments of deep inquiry amidst action and create capacity for and practice of mutual exercises of power, leading to patterns of timely action. In order to “do” CDAI, Torbert has created various ideas and tools for practice. For first- and second-person practice of CDAI, Torbert has developed two powerful tools, the four territories of experience and the four types of speech. In third-person research, he led the use of adult developmental theory in organization change and extended the theory to create stage models of organizational development and of social scientific development.

Eric Lansdown Trist was born in 1909 and died in June 1993 in Carmel, California. Eric lived in a golden age of organization thinking and experimentation. While small in physical stature, Eric was a giant in his thinking and influenced many of the most prominent practitioners and theoreticians in his generation and the next in organization theory and organization design. The list of his protégé’s reads a little like the subjects of this book. Those who knew him and learned from him were forever changed by his presence and thinking. This chapter reflects on Eric’s second trip to the USA and North America, from the middle 1960s until his death. After experiencing America during the Great Depression, Eric returned to the UK, to carve out his career and explore the world of work and the social psychology of people at work. He loved America and often found himself defending her to his colleagues. When the opportunity came in the mid-1960s, invited by Lou Davis at UCLA, Eric returned and left an indelible imprint on his generation and the one to follow. Those of us who view organization design as our calling owe it mostly to Eric and his inspiration.Terms like “industrial democracy,” “open systems,” and most importantly “sociotechnical systems” became mainstream notions because of Eric. He pioneered the notion of organization ecosystems and predicted the turbulence of the last half of the twentieth century, with his colleague Fred Emery. Eric lived and breathed “action research” and “action learning. He fervently believed that the wisdom in the organization could solve most anything (a theme you might hear in other chapters, as well). Each person had a voice, and each voice had to be heard.

Haridimos (“Hari”) Tsoukas is a Greek organizational theorist whose work has been influential in introducing and popularizing a holistic, process-based conception of organizational change. Traditional accounts of change assume that entities (including organizations) are by nature static and only undergo change after external force is applied. In contrast, Tsoukas maintains that change is ever-present in the social world and that change itself is the intrinsic basis for organizing. As such for Tsoukas, organizations are not static entities but ongoing processes of organizing, embedded within social nexuses of practices and discourses, which are constantly mutating. He identifies two main sources of organizational change: (i) the world being an open-system and (ii) the reflexive agent. The assumptions and conclusions underlying his work have been strongly influenced by interpretative, phenomenological, and process philosophy, as well as complexity theory. To acquaint the reader with his ideas and work, the chapter is structured as follows: first it will describe Tsoukas’ background, secondly it will summarize his key contributions to understanding organizational change, and thirdly it will discuss new insights from his work and it will conclude with his work’s legacies and unfinished business.

This paper explores the contributions of organization theorist Michael L. Tushman to the field of organization change and development. The first section gives an overview of his early professional development and important professional stages followed by his key contributions to the field. These include his early focus on innovation and boundary spanning roles in innovation systems as well as an information processing approach for understanding and designing organizations also using network analysis. His quest for phenomena-driven and practically relevant work with a focus on the entire system and processes leads to the development of the congruence model – a general model to research, understand, assess, and further develop organizations. His work with doctoral students resulted in the punctuated equilibrium model that he applied to both organizations and technological changes as external forces of change. Another important contribution is his effort in solving Abernathy’s productivity dilemma by developing the concept of ambidextrous organizations. These can deal with the apparent paradox of simultaneous exploitation and exploration. Ambidextrous organizations require, however, ambidextrous leadership – a concept that he explored in detail with his long-term colleague and friend Charles O’Reilley. The final section gives an overview of the many awards that he received up to this point as well as the way in which he worked. Most of his theories and frameworks were codeveloped with colleagues and doctoral students in a dialogical fashion. The paper closes with Michael Tushman’s future concerns whether the developed theories, models, and recommendations regarding innovation will still hold in an increasingly web-based society.

Peter B. Vaill is both pioneer and thought leader in the fields of organizational behavior (OB) and organization development (OD). Over the past 60 years, Peter’s ideas have influenced and informed numerous strands of thinking in the fields of management, leadership, and change. The common thread among these streams of thought: the relationship between organizational practice, theory, and learning. This chapter offers readers a glimpse into the career and work of Peter Vaill. Through several interviews with Peter, others who worked with him, and close readings of his writing, in this chapter we explore the themes and thinking that shaped Vaill’s contributions to the field of change.

Karl E. Weick is one of management’s and organizational science’s most influential social psychologists. He, more than most theorists, is responsible for pointing to the prevailing theories of management and organizational change and asking very pragmatic questions such as: “Is this plausible? What are we missing? What if we say this?” This chapter focuses on only four concepts within his large body of work: (1) organizing as a human process; (2) collective interpretation and loose coupling; (3) sensemaking; and (4) surprise and managing the unexpected. These concepts represent major departures from traditional rational models of organizational change. They are not necessarily labeled organizational change phenomena per se; however, each of them has been and remains critical to understanding human actions in the continuous flow of social change.

Marvin Weisbord’s work – as professional author, business executive, organizational consultant, researcher, Future Search method founder, and cofounder of its global network – spanned 50 years. He was a partner in the esteemed consultancy, Block Petrella Weisbord Inc., and he was a prolific writer and thinker, as well as practical craftsman, in the field. He is widely known for his multi-edition, Productive Workplaces: Dignity, Meaning and Community in the 21st Century (2012), chronicling the history of organizational improvement, the rise of its seminal concepts, and how he absorbed them in his own personal and professional development and in case studies. He worked and learned from many of the greatest names in organization development (OD) and was influenced intellectually most profoundly by Kurt Lewin. He saw in Lewin’s “action research” less of a technical change methodology than a way of thinking about and addressing organizational life and its dilemmas, using one’s own and others’ experience as the major source of change. This chapter describes the arc of his professional, conceptual, and practice development as an embodiment of action research. It also covers six enduring contributions of his – value-based perspectives, principles, and practices – and explores limitations and renewed possibilities of Weisbord’s legacy to the future of the field.

Richard (Dick) W. Woodman is a unique contemplative scholar who built his name in the field with his scholarship as well as his charming personality and satirical nature. The following chapter covers Dick’s personal history starting with growing up in rural Oklahoma, followed by his service in the US Army, and then his extended contributions to the profession. We discuss his life experiences and some of his lasting influences on the field. Early in his career, Dick helped popularize the concept of creativity in the field of management and organizational behavior by publishing one of the most highly cited and still actively researched theories on organizational creativity (Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, Acad Manag Rev 18:293–321, 1993). This was followed with several other important streams of scholarship including an emphasis on bridging scholars and practitioners as well as a focus on strengthening methodologies in organizational change research. In addition to this scholarship, Dick has also directly shaped the direction of research and practice in organizational change and development over the last 30 years as editor of two of the most influential publications: The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Research in Organizational Change and Development. We end this essay with a discussion of his lasting legacy in the change arena. Although recently retiring from a 38-year career as an endowed professor at Texas A&M, Dick continues to write and contribute to change scholarship. He encourages us to strengthen change research methodology, and his legacy of scholarship on creativity and change provides the conceptual basis for ongoing research with the interactionist model of creativity. He also challenges the field with two fundamental issues/questions: (1) individual changeability – how does the organization affect, and how do individuals change during and following episodes where an organization attempts to change? and (2) a temporal model of change – how might the field better incorporate an understanding of temporality and change in order to extend beyond the Lewin model by creating a more dynamic process model of change?

Therese Yaeger, Ph.D., has been a key contributor in the field of Organization Development for two decades. Beginning her career in the corporate world, Yaeger came to learn about the role of a scholar-practitioner through the MSMOB program at Benedictine University. She has since transitioned to academia focusing her research and publications on Appreciative Inquiry and Global OD. Therese is currently the Associate Director of Benedictine University’s Ph.D. in OD program and was a key partner in its development and implementation. At the same time, she continued to consult to corporate and created executive development programs for some of the largest corporations in the Chicago area.In addition to consulting and teaching, Yaeger has collaborated with colleagues and students on countless publications and presentations on a myriad of topics in the field. She has been involved in numerous roles in both professional and academic associations. Therese is a connector and has brought together scholarship and practice as well as people and organizations to continue to make key contributions. A humble yet prominent force in the field, many more years of exciting contributions are still ahead.

The book was inadvertently published with the incorrect chapter title. This information has been updated as “Barbara Czarniawska: Organizational Change – Fashions, Institutions, and Translations”.