2: Effecting Organizational Change

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the extant academic literature that lays the foundation for the study. focus areas of the literature review include the importance of qualitative research through the use of insider action research to engage members of the organization in co-researching an organization, transformational organizational change, organizational culture change, and challenges facing practitioners and scholars conducting organizational research.

Organization change is difficult in the best of organizations, and many leaders’ perceptions of how and who should lead change efforts are flawed (Beer, et al., 1993). In many cases, there is a feeling that change comes from top management, which then becomes a heavy burden typically resting on too few people (Pascale et al., 1997). Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector (1993) noted that programs rolled out by senior leaders and HR staff through formal systems exhibited little change impact. Instead, they asserted that meaningful change efforts start at the edges of the organization, far from the senior leaders and formal change processes, by lower-level general managers. They further asserted that change springs from these lower-level general managers aligning tasks at the edge of the organization and moving incrementally toward the senior leader core (Beer et al., 1993). Rajogopalan and Spreitzer (1997) suggested using a multi-lens framework to examine organization development and change, a framework that includes the integration of environmental conditions and changes, managerial cognitions, organizational conditions and changes, and managerial actions as they relate to changes in the organization’s strategy and eventual organizational outcomes and thus offers a more comprehensive view of organizations. Other scholars have identified a variety of challenges in studying organization change and development. Pettigrew, Woodman, & Cameron (2001) identified six challenges in studying organization change: