STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT: … · STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT: CHALLENGES EOR EUTURE RESEARCH AISJDREW M. PETTIGREW University of Warwick RIGHARD

® Academy of Management Journal2001, Vol. 44. No. 4. 697-713.

STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE ANDDEVELOPMENT: CHALLENGES EOR EUTURE RESEARCH

AISJDREW M. PETTIGREWUniversity of Warwick

RIGHARD W. WOODMANTexas A & M University

KIM S. GAIVIERONUniversity of Michigan

The study of change and development is one ofthe great themes in the social sciences. Many of thesocial and natural science disciplines have devel-oped theoretical literatures and empirical findingsabout the birth, development, transformation, de-cay, and decline of human and natural systems. Arecent tradition of research in the various fields ofthe organizational sciences has also grappled withorganizational change and development (Van deVen & Poole, 1995; Weick & Quinn, 1999; Wood-man, 1989). These theories of change in the fieldsof management and organization studies must facethe double hurdle of scholarly quality and practicalrelevance (Pettigrew, 1997). In addition to theirrelative youth, interdisciplinarity, and fragmenta-tion, management and organization scholarship arechallenged to develop knowledge in the image ofscience while also contributing to practice and pol-icy making. Tbis challenge has proven formidable;the change literature has been characterized as "afew theoretical propositions . . . repeated withoutadditional data or development; a few bits ofhomey advice . . . reiterated without proof or dis-proof; and a few sturdy empirical observations . . .quoted with reverence but without refinement orexplication" (Kahn, 1974; 487). Although Kahn'sobservation was made over a quarter of a centuryago, some contemporary scholars consider that theassessment remains dismayingly accurate (cf. Macy& Izumi, 1993).

Fortunately, research and writing on organiza-tional change is undergoing a metamorphosis. Forexample, Pettigrew (1985) critiqued the literatureon organizational change as being largely acontex-tual, ahistorical, and aprocessual. Since then, con-siderable advances have been made in these areas.For example, several writers have acknowledgedthat context and action are inseparable, that theo-ries of change ought to explain continuity, and thattime must be an essential part of investigations ofchange if processes are to be uncovered (Green-

wood & Hinings, 1996; Orlikowski, 1996; Van deVen, Angle, & Poole, 1989). This interest in timeand process also triggered a new curiosity about thepace and sequencing of action in change processes(Gersick, 1994; Kessler & Ghakrabarti, 1996; Weick& Quinn, 1999).

On the other hand, the field of organizationalchange is far from mature in understanding thedynamics and effects of time, process, discontinu-ity, and context. In particular, in a complex, dy-namic, and internationally conscious world, asearch for general patterns of change requires evenmore focus on temporal and spatial context. Gen-eralizations are hard to sustain over time, and theyare even tougher to uphold across international,institutional, and cultural borders. Dynamism hasbeen difficult to study, and social science has de-veloped quite comfortably as an exercise in com-parative statics. Static states or cross-sectional anal-yses are privileged over the complex processes thatlead to understanding the dynamics of changeacross time and space.

In this introduction to the Academy of Manage-ment Journal's Special Research Forum on Ghangeand Development Journeys into a Pluralistic World,we propose that students of change should payeven greater attention to six key issues. Whereasprogress is being made by organizational and man-agement scholars, as we mentioned above, the or-ganizational change literature remains underdevel-oped regarding these six interconnected analyticalissues; (1) The examination of multiple contextsand levels of analysis in studying organizationalchange, (2) the inclusion of time, history, process,and action, (3) the link between change processesand organizational perforniance outcomes, (4) theinvestigation of international and cross-culturalcomparisons in research on organizational change,(5) the study of receptivity, customization, se-quencing, pace, and episodic versus continuouschange processes, and (6) the partnership between

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scholars and practitioners in studying organiza-tional change. We first explain and illustrate thesesix issues and then present a guide to the ten arti-cles in this special research forum. We provide agentle, coarse-grained assessment of these studieswith regard to their involvement with our six ana-lytical issues. Finally, we offer a conclusion and afurther challenge for research on organizationalchange.

SIX INTERGONNEGTED ANALYTIGALGHALLENGES IN STUDYINGORGANIZATIONAL GHANGE

Let us be clear about the purpose of this sectionof our introduction. That purpose is not to offer acomprehensive review of what is known and notknown about organizational change. Neither is it todiscuss the alternative methodologies for studyingchange. We do not claim to offer an exhaustivecritical review of major empirical studies, nor dowe review the different theoretical frameworksused to guide and interpret research on organiza-tional change. Gomprehensiveness is one route toperspective, but here we challenge by means ofselectivity and focusing. The analytical challengeswe offer are necessarily partial, but they are in-formed by experience of research on organizationalchange coming from different continents, stem-ming from varying intellectual traditions, and ap-plying different theoretical perspectives and re-search methods. Incomplete as our challenges maybe, they are, perhaps, provocative enough for thosewith a serious interest in the study of organiza-tional change. We offer them here in a spirit that wehope will provoke a counter-challenge. We do notseek a spurious new orthodoxy, even if one werepossible. In the process of knowledge production,intellectual diversity is a more attractive and pos-sibly more effective scbolarly goal than is intellec-tual closure.

Multiple Gontexts and Levels of Analysis

Twenty years ago, it was quite common in em-pirical studies of organizational change for the unitof analysis to be a change event or episode. Fromsuch studies much was learned about tbe driversand inhibitors of change in particular settings atparticular points in time, but less was learnedabout tbe temporal and spatial contextual factorsthat were shaping those particular episodes. Withthe rise of contextualism as a theory of method inthe 1980s (based on much earlier thinking by thephilosopher Stephen Pepper [1942]), so arose amore exacting approach to studying organizational

change. One variant of this contextualist approachwas the view that theoretically sound and practi-cally useful research on change should explore thecontexts, content, and process of a change togetherwith their interconhections over time. This newfocus on changing rather than on change presentedscholars with a dual challenge; (1) to attempt tocatch reality in flight and (2) to study long-termprocesses in their contexts in order to elevate em-beddedness to a principle of method.

In the early work in this tradition, context wasdichotomized into the outer and inner contexts oforganizations. Outer context included the eco-nomic, social, political, and sector environment inwhich a firm was located. Inner context, mean-while, was defined as features of the structural,cultural, and political environments through whichideas and actions for change would proceed (Petti-grew, 1985). At the same time as this work onchange was emerging in Europe, related work usinga slightly different language and quite different re-search methods—but still placing a heavy empha-sis on the longitudinal study of change processes intheir context—was developing in the United States(e.g., Lewin, Long, & Garroll, 1999; Van de Ven etal., 1989). In addition, seminal work on organiza-tional creativity also emphasized context in theorydevelopment (e.g., Amabile, 1983, 1988; Wood-man, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). Understanding organ-izational creativity as an exemplar of organiza-tional change and innovation was seen as apromising avenue of exploration. Most impor-tantly, however, organizational creativity cannot bemeaningfully examined without developing re-search and theory focused on the situation withinwhich creative processes and outcomes occur.

Different as they are, all of the above programs ofresearch on change, innovation, and creativityplace great emphasis on the role of contexts in theprocessual analysis of change. If the change processis the stream of analysis, the terrain around thestream that shapes the field of events, and is in turnshaped by them, is a necessary part of the investi-gation. There are many large analytical challengesimplicit in this kind of contextualist inquiry. Therecognition that processes of change are embeddedin contexts and can only be studied as such createsa need to conceptualize and study the interactivefield within which changes are emerging over time.

There are two key analytical choices to makewhen one specifies this interactive field. One ishow many levels of analysis to include in the treat-ment of context. The second concerns complexity.Given that there are not only different levels ofcontext to consider, but also most likely multiplerelated processes underway at those different lev-

2001 Pettigrew, Woodman, and Cameron 699

els, all impacting on the primary change processunder investigation, the second choice is whichprocesses should be included and which excluded.A source of change in this form of analysis is theasymmetries between levels of context, where theintertwined processes ofren have their own mo-mentum, pace, and trajectory. Thus, the rate andtrajectory of change in an industrial sector facingsignificant boundary changes may be much fasterthan the sensing and adjustment pathways of indi-vidual firms to the regrouping of the sector. Therelative slowness of the sensing and adaptationprocess of firms, and their failure to recognize thatthe bases of competition may have changed in theirsector, can be a key factor explaining their loss ofcompetitive performance (Pettigrew & Whipp,1991).

Whatever the combination of levels of contextbrought into an analysis (and these have rangedfrom the intraorganizational level, through the sec-tor, broad economic and political context, and na-tion state levels, to the global competition level),the potential payoff from this form of analyticalambition lies in the kinds of questions aboutchange that can be posed and answered.

From the inner context of firms arise questionsabout the role of history, structure, cultures, power,and politics in enabling and constraining change.From the sector and economy emanate questionsabout the links between firm-level bebavior, thechanging boundaries and composition of sectors,and the punishing effects of altering macro eco-nomic conditions within and between nationstates. And in international comparative work (towhich we will shortly turn), scholars can explorethe links between the rate and pattern of organiza-tional innovations and the varying institutional,regulatory, and cultural contexts of nation states.

Treating the contexts of change as an interactionfield creates additional challenges as well. Focus-ing, on interaction moves away from the variablesparadigm toward a form of holistic explanation.The intellectual task is to examine how and whyconstellations of forces shape the' character ofchange processes rather than "fixed entities withvariable qualities" (Abbott, 1992; 1). Rather thancausality being attributed to variables, social actorsmove onto the stage of history as agents of history.Ghange explanations are no longer pared down tothe relationships between independent and depen-dent variables but instead are viewed as an inter-action between context and action. Grucially, con-text is used analytically not just as a stimulusenvironment, but also as a nested arrangement ofstructures and processes in which the subjective

interpretations of actors' perceiving, learning, andremembering help shape process.

Important as a contextualist analysis is to theunderstanding of change, its potential analyticalpower is limited without a sound treatment of ac-tion and also a sophisticated form of temporal anal-ysis. The only way to reveal the relationship be-tween multiple levels of context in the interactionfield is to have a time series sufficiently long toshow how firm, sector, and economic levels of con-text interact to energize change processes. Hereinlies our next series of analytical challenges; how toincorporate time, history, process, and action in thestudy of organizational change.

Time, History, Process, and Action

In modernist social science, theories are univer-sal and free from the specifics of time and place(Glark, 2000). The effect of this modernist tendencyis so deep and pervasive in contemporary socialscience, and it infiltrates the practice of social anal-ysis so implicitly, that many of its practitioners arenot even aware of its impact on their scholarlyroutines. However, recent interest in time in socialanalysis (Avital, 2000; George & Jones, 2000; Mosa-kowski & Earley, 2000) has brought to wider atten-tion the liabilities of atemporal analysis in organi-zational tbeorizing and empirical researcb. Forexample, Avital (2000) did not just offer an onto-logical critique of atemporal work, but also pro-vided data from contemporary organizational re-searchers about why they limited themselves to"the ubiquitous single-snapshot technique" (Avi-tal, 2000; 66). He noted that single-snapshot meth-ods are not accidental or transitory, but rather arerooted in the deep structure of modernist socialscience.

George and Jones reached a similar conclusion;"Temporality is an essential feature of organiza-tional behavior and it makes little sense to ignore it,treat it implicitly, or treat it in an inadequate man-ner" (2000: 677). For George and Jones, the price ofa timeless organizational analysis is inadequatetheorizing that fails to address some of the bigconundrums in fields such as leadership and jobredesign. However, a bigger casualty from an atem-poral organizational analysis may be the still smallnumber of process studies of organizational cbangethat offer a holistic and dynamic analysis of chang-ing.

Organizational analysis has been adroit at pro-viding an image of dynamics while suppressingprocesses. Van de Ven (1992) argued that process isoften used in three ways in the literature; (1) as alogic used to explain a causal relationship in a


variance theory, (2) as a category of concepts thatrefer to individuals or organizations, and (3) as asequence of events that describe how things changeover time. Of these three approaches, only the thirdpermits explicit and direct observation of the pro-cess in action and, thereby, allows describing andaccounting for how some entity or issue developsand changes over time. Thus, the definition of pro-cess needed in the literature on change should referto sequences of individual and collective events,actions, and activities unfolding over time in con-text. This view of change processes as continuouscontrasts with a view of changes as movement fromone state to another (Weick & Quinn, 1999). Thisemphasis on continuity and change in organiza-tions is underrepresented in the change literature.Any adequate theory of change should account forcontinuity, and this minimally requires the empir-ical exposure of change and continuity and therelationship between the two.

Garvin (1998) offered an integrating review of theliterature that usefully drew together writing onwork processes, behavioral processes, and changeprocesses. Langley (1999) provided an analyticalaccount of theorizing from process data. A fewother authors (e.g., Pettigrew, 1985, 1987; Van deVen, PoUey, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999) alsohave added to the empirical process literature.MacKenzie (2000) became a convert to processes inchange research in. proclaiming a new paradigm forthe organizational sciences, the "process ap-proach." He wrote the following; "Processes areoften encapsulated in the form of variables. How-ever, a variable about a process is not exactly thesame as the process itself. Hence, processes arecloser to the actual behavior than their encapsula-tion as variables" (2000; 110).

The language of change can be a liberating intel-lectual force or an analytical prison. Weick (1969)argued that a more active and processual treatmentof organizing required the sublimation of tbe morefamiliar word "organization." In 1979, in the sec-ond edition of The Social Psychology of Organ-izing, Weick followed up with an even more em-phatic plea, which can be paraphrased as "Stampout nouns and stamp in verbs."

Since then, other authors have taken up the samechallenge. Sandelands and Drazin pointed out thelimitations of the variables paradigm and insteadproposed exposing "how things come about [ratberthan] mystify the process in a welter of misbegottenobservations and inautbentic processes" (Sand-elands & Drazin, 1989; 458). They drew upon Ryle's(1949) distinction between achievement verbs(choice and change) and task verbs (cboosing andcbanging) to make the point that theorizing about

process is enabled by an active, dynamic vocabu-lary. This linguistic mechanism is currently beingexplored and exploited in several large interna-tional studies of new forms of organizing and com-pany performance. New forms of organizing are, ofcourse, emerging (cf. Purser & Pasmore, 1993; Rob-ertson, 1999). A process vocabulary can best cap-ture processes of emergence (Pettigrew & Fenton,2000; Whittington & Melin, forthcoming).

Thus far in our arguments, we have harnessedthe study of changing to a series of tough chal-lenges. Of these, the most compelling are the re-quirement to link context with action and the con-comitant need to expose processes and mechanismsof change through temporal analysis. But what arethe special features of a process vocabulary that canhelp uncover novel theoretical questions and re-veal original findings? At the most general level,process questioning involves the interrogation ofphenomena over time using the language of what,who, where, why, when, and how.

In addition to this special sensitivity to temporalquestioning, the change scholar needs also to bemindful that time is more than just clock time orchronology. Time is not just "out there" as neutralchronology, but also "in here" as a social construc-tion. Thus there is the constant challenge to studyevents and the social construction of events in thecontext of the local organizational time cycles thatmodulate the implicit rhythms of social systems.The temporal analyst must also identify events andchronologies to use as stepping stones in the searchfor patterns and structures. So the task becomes toidentify patterns in the process of changing. His-tory matters. But history is not just events andchronology, it is carried forward in the human con-sciousness. The past is alive in the present and maybe sbaping the emerging future. But change schol-ars must beware in all tbis of the convenient liter-ary fiction of predetermined timetables of orderedand inevitable sequences or stages. Trajectories ofchange are especially probabilistic and uncertainbecause of changing contexts and the resultantcomplexities and ambiguities of human action.

Pragmatically, however, how can scholars makethe concepts of time, process, and history key partsof their studies? Those prepared to make big com-mitments have three obvious options. Historicalinvestigation can most readily provide long timeseries, and there has been a reawakening of interestin historical studies of industrial, institutional, andorganizational change (Jeremy, 2001; Kieser, 1994).For the real-time analyst of innovation and changein organizational settings, the Minnesota Innova-tion Research Program (MIRP) represents an exem-plary example (Van de Ven et al., 1989). And for


those who wish to combine retrospective and real-time analyses of change processes, the Warwicktradition of research on corporate strategy andchange is another body of published experience(Pettigrew, 1985; Pettigrew & Fenton, 2000; Petti-grew & Whipp, 1991).

Ghange Processes and OrganizationalPerformance Outcomes

In a recent extensive review of the research andwriting on the determinants of organizational per-formance, Pettigrew, Brignall, Harvey, and Webb(1999) noted an imbalance in the development ofthat body of researcb. The review identified a verywide literature on the measurement of perfor-mance, a rapidly developing literature on perfor-mance management, and a relatively sparse andoften contestable series of empirical studies on thedeterminants of organizational performance. Man-agement scholars seem to have been curiously un-curious about why and how certain organizationsconsistently "outperform" their competitors. Wheresuch studies exist, they are often found wanting,sometimes because of disputes about tbe chosenmethod of performance measurement and, in othercases, because of a tendency to use either univari-ate or unithematic explanations of performance dif-ferences. Examples of attempts to use univariateexplanations of performance determinants includework seeking to link information technology to per-formance, and an equivalent unithematic examplecould be studies linking human resource manage-ment to variations in performance.

The research literature on organizational changemay be criticized for similar reasons. Thus, al-though there are undoubtedly problems with whathas been done, tbe bigger deficiencies lie in wbathas been lefr out. There are now many studies ofchange processes, even more evaluating change in-terventions, and still others trying to disentanglethe interrelated set of factors contributing to tbesuccess of change initiatives. However, in very fewempirical studies do researchers seek to linkchange capacity and action to organizational per-formance. We would have thought by now thatprocess analysts of change would have been inter-ested not just in the results of change processes orthe processes that lead those results, but also in thedynamic and holistic appreciation of both pro-cesses and outcomes. Perhaps it is now timely tocombine the learning from studies of the determi-nants of organizational performance with the expe-rience that change scholars have had in trying tostudy the reciprocal relationship between changeprocesses and performance outcomes.

The fact that this is a notably difficult researcharea should not deter us from the challenge. Eventhe more confined area of evaluating the success ofchange initiatives is replete with practical difficul-ties. What is success in the management of change?Definitions of success can include notions of thequantity, quality, and pace of change. There maywell be trade-offs among those three, with quantityand pace achieved at the price of the quality of achange process. Judgments about success are alsolikely to be conditional on who is doing the assess-ment and when the judgments are made.

Whatever the challenges, building a performanceoutcome into a change process research design hasa number of practical advantages. First, the out-come provides a focal point, an anchor for thewhole investigation. This is particularly valuablewhen the process involves the collection and anal-ysis of a long time series. Second, and crucially,there is the possibility of exploring how and whyvariations in context and process shape variabilityin the observed performance outcomes across acomparative investigation.

However, it is one tbing to analyze tbe factorssbaping the fate of change episodes and a muchbigger and more intractable problem to produceconvincing evidence that a pattern of change initi-atives contributes to organizational performance.The rise and then fall of Peters and Waterman's(1982) book has undermined small-sample studiesthat look only at high performers. This event leavesscholars of change with two options that, ideally,they should combine. Option 1 is to carry out large-sample studies over time to clarify any associationbetween the patterns of change adopted by firmsand tbeir financial performance. Such a researchstrategy would allow linking the "what" of changeto firm performance but would reveal very littleabout the process and context of changing. Option2, to carry out an associated set of longitudinalcomparative case studies of matched pairs of orga-nizations with high and low performance, thenarises. Such case studies would allow researchersto answer questions about the process, context, andcustomization of change strategies that aid buildingand sustaining superior performance.

As yet there are still few longitudinal attempts tolink change processes and practices to firm perfor-mance. The well-known and influential book Builtto Last, by GoUins and Porras (1995), gets close tothis aim. It is well-researched and draws on a rea-sonably large sample of matcbed pairs of visionaryand comparison companies, strong analysis of thefactors that built and sustained the visionary ele-ments, and commendable use of survey data andbistorical investigation; however, it stops short of


explicitly linking change with financial perfor-mance.

A European study conducted in the late 1980s byPettigrew and Whipp (1991) examined the processof managing strategic and operational change infour mature industry and service sectors of the U.K.economy; automobiles, book publishing, invest-ment banking, and life insurance. A pair of firmswas chosen for study in each of the four sectors.Each pair was made up of a higher and a lesserperformer in the same broad product market. Thispairing avoided the general bias in the businessliterature of glorifying successful organizations andallowed direct comparisons of similarities and dif-ferences in change strategies. In summary, the highperformers differed from the lesser performers inthe way they conducted environmental assessment,led change, linked sfrategic and operational change,managed their human resources as assets andliabilities, and managed coherence in the overallprocess of competition and change. Because thisstudy had a 30-year time series, it was possible toimpose a double test on these five interrelated fac-tors. The factors were used botb to explain thedifferential performance of a firm in one era ofbusiness development and also to account for theloss or gain of performance relative to its compar-ator over time.

Such studies are still rare in management re-search. They require big commitments from fund-ing bodies, teams of researchers kept together overseveral years, and sustained cooperation from organ-izations under investigation. Any particular studyalso has its limitations. The major limitations of thePettigrew and Whipp (1991) research were the rel-atively small sample of firms under longitudinalinvestigation and their location in a single econ-omy. The Gollins and Porras (1995) study, with its18 matched pairs of firms almost exclusively fromthe United States, also had a national boundary (thesingle exception was its inclusion of Sony). We willreturn to the importance of international compara-tive research on organizational change later in thisarticle.

Progress in big research themes is dependent notjust on novel and energetic research strategies, butalso on important theoretical developments. Recenttheoretical work on the new economics of comple-mentarities pioneered at Stanford University byMilgrom and Roberts (1990, 1995) has great poten-tial to enrich studies seeking to link innovationsin organizational practices to firm performance.Although complementarities thinking has been de-veloped most strongly in economics, it is easilyconnectable to and develops related thinking incontingency and configurational organization theory

(Donaldson, 1996; Miller, 1996). Gontingency think-ers have tended to make disaggregated one-to-onecomparisons of variables and their links with perfor-mance. Gonfigurational theory extended this thinkingto examination of more holistic and aggregated com-parisons of the performance of whole types. Gomple-mentarities theory extends the confrgurational ap-proach in two ways. First, complementarities theorygenerates performance predictions that go beyondsimple binary-type comparisons of one confrgurationwith another and emphasizes the problems of beingcaught making only a subset of the notional and per-haps desired changes. Second, complementarties the-ory insists on a simultaneously aggregated and disag-gregated analysis, both to defrne the conditionality ofindividual effects on other effects and to ensure thatfull systems effects outweigh individual componenteffects (Whittington et al., 1999).

The crucial general proposition from comple-mentarities theory is that high-performing firms arelikely to be combining a number of changes at thesame time and that the payoffs to a full system ofchanges are greater than the sum of its parts, someof which taken on their own might even have neg-ative effects. This proposition is supported bymeta-analytic work that shows that significant or-ganizational improvement requires congruentchanges in a wide array of system variables (Rob-ertson, Roberts, & Porras, 1993). Tbe challenge ofexamining this significant theoretical developmentis now being taken up with a range of empiricalstudies throughout the world. Ichniowski, Shaw,and Prenushi (1997) sought to study links betweenhuman resource complementarities and productiv-ity in a sample of U.S. steel mills. In the InnovativeForms of Organizing (INNFORM) program of re-search in Europe, complementarities theory is usedto examine innovative forms of organizing andcompany performance in a large sample of Euro-pean, Japanese, and U.S. organizations (Pettigrew &Fenton, 2000; Whittington et al., 1999). However,these studies are few compared with the great sci-entific and policy need for research linking change toorganizational performance.

International Gomparative Research onOrganizational Ghange

If studies linking change with performance re-quire big commitments, these shade into insignifi-cance compared with the challenges and risks ofinternational comparative work. And yet in a cul-turally diverse and globally competitive world,scholars can only sit in discomfort in their owncorners of the world pretending their patterns ofchange are the world's patterns of change. In this


section of our article, we thereby go beyond thesignificance of firm, sector,, economic, political,and temporal context to give front stage to nationalcontext.

Glarke (2000; 10) commented that national differ-ences have not been a strong driver of organizationstudies. There are many potential reasons for this.One certainly is the sheer difficulty of empiricalwork across national boundaries. A second is themodernist scientific tendency to prize the universalover the particular. A third (and this is probablyeasier to see outside the United States than inside)is the enormous impact of the U.S. social and man-agement sciences on the rest of the world. How-ever, with this great power as a knowledge pro-ducer has sometimes come an unwitting tendencyto treat context as undiscussed background. So U.S.social scientists have often implied that their theo-ries and findings are universal (Glarke, 2000; Whit-tington & Mayer, 2000). This tendency probablypeaked in the •1960s and 1970s with scholars suchas Parsons (1964), Rostow (1960), and Ghandler(1977). More recently, there is a heightened senseof the significance of national and regional differ-ences and of their importance in shaping the re-sponses of firms to emerging markets (Hoskisson,Eden, Lau, & Wright, 2000), rates of entrepreneurialdevelopment (McGrath, 2001), and patterns of cor-porate governance (Davis & Useem, 2001), amongother features of organizational life.

Nevertheless, research on organizational changeand restructuring has usually focused on singlecases or samples of firms in one country (e.g.,Geroski & Gregg, 1994, Liebeskind, Opler, & Hat-field, 1996). There are, of course, counterexamples.Buhner, Rasheed, and Rosenstein (1997) have com-pleted an empirical study of change in a sample ofU.S. and German firms. An international team ofresearchers has completed a multinational compar-ative study of continuous improvement (GI) pro-grams in eight different companies in Europe, Ja-pan, and North America (Lillrank, Shani, Kolodny,Stymne, Figuera, & Liu, 1998). Their analysis de-tails both differences and similarities in the designof GI across the eight firms compared and providesa good example of the benefits from internationalcomparative work. Further, there has been at leasttbe beginnings of work comparing the differencesand similarities in the design and implementationof organization development programs across na-tional cultures (e.g., Lau, 1996; Lau, McMahan, &Woodman, 1996).

In addition, very large programs of internationalcomparative work are underway involving teams ornetworks of international scholars led from theUnited States and Britain. The current most notable

examples of such work are the New OrganizationalForms for the Information Age (NOFIA) programcoordinated by Lewin (Lewin, Long, & Garoll 1999;Lewin & Volberda, 1999) and INNFORM programcoordinated by Pettigrew (Pettigrew & Fenton,2000). The NOFIA program is building a databaseof organizational change events occurring withinthe largest corporations in Germany, Japan, Korea,the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, theUnited Kingdom and the United States, using busi-ness-related information and news sources avail-able from the Lexis Nexis on-line database. Thesebroad mapping data (which have a temporal com-ponent) are being supplemented by country casestudies.

The INNFORM researchers aim to examine theextent to which new forms of organizing have beenimplemented among large and medium-sized firmsacross Europe, tbe United States, and Japan, to testthe performance effects of adopting new organiza-tional forms, and to examine the managerial pro-cesses of moving from more traditional forms oforganizing.

These three aims require the implementation of amultimethod research strategy and the collection oftemporal data. This introduction is not the place topresent the findings of this program of research, butthe interested reader may wish to consult Ruigrok,Pettigrew, Peck, and Whittington (1999), Whitting-ton, Pettigrew, Peck, Fenton, and Gonyon (1999),Pettigrew, Massini, and Numagami (2000), and Pet-tigrew and Fenton (2000). However, to encouragerelated international research, we note the follow-ing: (1) The trends data comparing the adoption ofinnovative forms of organizing in Europe, Japan,and the United States have shown a common di-rection of change with different starting points andinvolving different paces. (2) Broadly, the findingsindicate an incremental rather than a radical pat-tern of innovation in organizations. Organizationsacross the three regions appeared in the 1990s to besupplementing existing organizational forms ratherthan supplanting them. (3) However, within thispattern of homogeneity there were big, statisticallysignificant differences in some of tbe indicators ofinnovation within Europe, and between Europeand Japan and tbe United States and Japan. (4) Inthe 1990s, the pace of organizational change wasappreciably more incremental in Japan than in Eu-rope and the United States. (5) In Europe, explora-tion of the complementarities theory indicated astrong association between whole-system changeand firm performance. Whole-system change heremeant changing structures, processes, and bound-aries. Firms that made part-system changes, nota-bly those that changed structures and boundaries


but not processes, revealed a negative associationwith organizational performance. This finding isconsistent with meta-analytic work in North Amer-ica that indicates successful systemwide changerequires use of multiple change levers, many ofwhich involve various work processes (Macy &Izumi, 1993).

As broadly as these findings are presented here,it is still possible to see the potential of interna-tional comparative work for mapping trends in or-ganizational changes across, not just within, na-tional boundaries. Such data can also more readilydeflate easy assumptions about diversity or homo-geneity across nations, not only in the content anddirection of change, but also in its process andpace. The challenge is easy to recognize, and so arethe practical problems of delivery (Pettigrew &Whittington, 2000).

Receptivity, Gustomization, Sequencing, Pace,and Episodic versus Gontinuous Ghange

The codification and transmission of changemanagement laiowledge and techniques have beenthorough in most Western economies. The ideasand techniques of change management are now aglobal industry led by international consultingfirms, gurus, a few high-profile chief executive of-ficers, mass-media business publications, and busi-ness schools. The net effect of this diffusion is thatmost executives and consultants are familiar withthe broad questions of change justification andchange content. The why and what of change areofren reasonably self-evident in many settings.

The more difficult questions, and the ones leaststudied by researchers, are temporal and situa-tional. Where does a change agent begin a givenchange initiative, and what are the varying degreesof receptivity to change in this or that organiza-tional division or national business context? Evenif change agents know about the factors shapingdegrees of receptivity to change, how should theycustomize the content and process of change toreflect the contexts of different parts of their or-ganizations? The pragmatic temporal questions arealso largely unstudied and inadequately under-stood. Where does one intervene first, and why (cf.Robertson et al., 1993)? What sequence of changeinterventions might flow from initial moves? Whatpace of change is appropriate in different settings tomeet local and companywide objectives? And howdo change agents maintain the momentum forchange over time, given the now well understoodtendency for change processes to run out of energyand momentum (Beer, Eisenstadt, & Spector, 1990;Pettigrew, 1998)?

It is clear that the what-to-do questions aboutorganizational change need to be set alongside thewhere, how, and when questions. Doing this meansmore serious attempts to frame organizationalchange research by features of temporal and spatialcontext. Only then will researchers be in a positionto intelligently contribute to the theory and prac-tice of change receptivity, customization, sequenc-ing, and pacing.

But for the scholar interested in developing re-search on the pacing and sequencing of change andreceptivity to it, where are the notable steppingstones? Pacing and receptivity are analytically in-terdependent and alignable. The works by Kesslerand Ghakrabarti (1996), Eisenhardt (1989), Brownand Eisenhardt (1995, 1997), and Gersick (1988,1989, 1994) are all potential building blocks, eventbougb these widely scattered studies cross levelsof analysis and explore different processes and set-tings for innovation and change. Thus, the Kesslerand Ghakrabarti review paper (1996) and the em-pirical work of Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) focuslargely on the product development process as theunit of analysis. In Eisenhardt's earlier work (1989),the decision-making process is the unit of analysis,and Gersick took forward her earlier thinking aboutthe pacing behavior of project groups (1988, 1989)into an organizational study of a venture capital-backed start-up company (1994).

The distinction between episodic and continu-ous change also requires mention. The term "epi-sodic change" groups organizational changes thattend to be infrequent, discontinuous, and inten-tional. Tbe assumption is that episodic changesoccur as organizations move away from equilib-rium or cbange as a result of a misalignment orenvironmental encroachment. Interventionists canmotivate and manage episodic change. Miller's re-search (1993, 1994) on the unintended conse-quences of successful performance exemplifies acarefully constructed examination of episodicchange. Successful organizations discarded prac-tices, people, and structures they regarded as pe-ripheral to success and growth. Miller's researchcontrasts with a much rarer—but mucb-needed—form of research on change that treats change as acontinuous, nonepisodic phenomenon. Gontinu-ous changes are those that are ongoing, evolving,and cumulative; "a new pattern of organizing in theabsence of explicit a priori intentions" (Orlikowski,1996; 65) would exemplify such change. The dis-tinctive quality of continuous change is its small,uninterrupted adjustments, created simultaneouslyacross units, which create cumulative and substan-tial change. Studies by Sitkin, Sutcliffe, and Weick(1998), Sahlin-Andersson (1996), and Moorman


and Miner (1998) in which improvisation, contin-uous adaptation and editing, learning, and chang-ing response repertoires are the foci of change anal-yses all represent this relatively rare approach tochange research. Like the investigation of changeprocesses, the study of continuous change is diffi-cult, time-consuming, and resource dependent.

A set of studies on the sequencing of changeprocesses also warrants further investigation anddevelopment. Early research and writing by Kanter(1983) and Hinings and Greenwood (1988) sug-gested that it may be more important to alter someelements of an organization before altering others.In particular, in their change archetypes work Hin-ings and Greenwood (1988) argued that, if alteredfirst, "high impact" features of an organization pro-vide a clear signal of the scale of future intentionsand thereby construct a more receptive context forfurther action. A tradition of research going back tothe' 1960s suggests that beginnings are fateful(Stinchcombe, 1965), and this tenet is now embed-ded in a strong corpus of writing on path depen-dency (Mahoney, 2000). It seems remiss of organi-zational change scholars to have given limitedattention to such important questions as. Does theorder of things influence the way they turn out? Forthe practitioner of change, there is also a hunger toknow whether those processes and mechanismsresponsible for initiating change are similar to ordifferent from those responsible for sustaining orregenerating organizational change.

Engagement between Scholars and Practitioners

It is never easy looking at others and ourselvesthrough the partisan fog of the present. Neverthe-less, through our contemporary haze it is possibleto discuss a wider appreciation of the forms andprocesses of knowledge generation and use. Gon-temporary analysts of social science and of man-agement knowledge tend to emphasize their tenta-tive, partial, theoretical, linguistic, and constructednature (Blackler, Reed, & Whitaker, 1993a). There isalso a clearer recognition in recent work in thenatural and social sciences that knowledge derivesnot just from individual thought but from collectiveprocesses of networking, negotiation, interpersonalcommunication, and influence. Thankfully, socialand organizational scientists are not just regardedas citizens but also as buman beings. More conten-tiously, there is also the view that knowledge work-ers are rarely just in the business of communicatingevidence, facts, empirical generalizations, or eventheories. More ofren than not, they may also beobserved to be communicating inferences from

bodies of evidence rather than the evidence itself(Blackler, Reed, and Whitaker, 1993b).

Some writers on the natural sciences claim that anew social production of knowledge is emerging.But what are the broad elements of this structuraltransition in scientific endeavor? For Gibbons andhis colleagues (Gibbons, Limoges, Notwotny,Schwartzman, Scott, & Trow, 1994), the move isfrom "mode 1" to "mode 2" knowledge production,with mode 2 supplementing rather than supplant-ing mode 1. Gibbons et al. characterized mode 1 asdiscipline driven. Here, research problems areframed and solved within a linear process of dis-covery and dissemination, and research involvesteams homogeneous in terms of skills and experi-ence and features discipline-directed quality con-trol. In mode 2, research problems are framed in thecontext of application. Here, research is transdisci-plinary, allows diffusion during knowledge pro-duction, involves teams heterogeneous in terms ofskills and experience, and is more socially andpolitically accountable than the discipline-drivencontrol process of mode 1.

Eschewing an ideal type of analysis, Ziman (1994)observed similar trends. Thus, Ziman's picture ofmodern science is a tapestry of more management,more evaluation, greater interdisciplinarity, more em-phasis on application, more networking and collabo-ration, more internationalism, and more specializa-tion and concenfration of resources. Although neitherZiman nor Gibbons et al. refer directly to the field ofmanagement research, it is clear that the frends theyrefer to bear on the conduct of research in manage-ment at the beginning of tbe 21st century. As knowl-edge producers, management scbolars need to criti-cally examine our practice of knowledge productionand take advantage of all the new opportunities thatthis changing intellectual, social, and political con-text is presenting to us (Huff, 2000; Pettigrew, 1997;Tranfield & Starkey, 1998). This is particularly so inan interdisciplinary arena such as organizationalchange, where a detached response risks-being left onthe margins.

SPEGIAL RESEARGH FORUM ON GHANGEAND DEVELOPMENT JOURNEYS INTO A

PLURALISTIG WORLD

In this section, we will briefly describe eacb oftbe ten articles included in the Special ResearchForum on Ghange and Development Journeys into aPluralistic World. In addition, we will discuss eachof these contributions in light of the six analyticalchallenges that we have posed. Table 1 summarizesour assessment of the ten works in terms of a focuson each of the six challenges. This assessment is


TABLE 1Issue Focus of the Articles in the Special Research Forum on Ghange and Development Journeys into a

Pluralistic World

Article

Dutton, Ashford, O'Neill, and LawrenceArthur and Aiman-SmithHeracleous and BarrettLovelace, Shapiro, and WeingartOkhuysenDenis, Lamothe, and LangleySiggelkowFerrierPettusNoda and Collis

(1) MultipleContexts or

Levels ofAnalysis

XX

XXXXX

(2) Time,History,Process,

and Action

XXX

XXXXX

(3) LinkingProcess toOutcome

XX

(4) InternationalComparative

Research

(5) Receptivity,Customization,

Sequencing,and Pace

X

X

X

XXX

(6) LinkingScholarshipand Practice

X

X

X

X

certainly a coarse-grained analysis rather than adetailed scrutiny. Also, in fairness to the authors,they were making no attempt to "map onto" ourworldview with regard to research challenges inthe organizational change arena. Obviously, weconsider each of these papers to make significantcontributions to the literature of organizationalchange, else they would not appear here. Rather,we offer Table 1 in the spirit of beginning a dia-logue.

The first study, "Moves That Matter; Issue Sell-ing and Organizational Ghange," by Jane Dutton,Susan Asbford, Regina O'Neill, and KatherineLawrence, examines the phenomenon of "issueselling"—the process by which individuals affectothers' attention to and understanding of issues—within the context of organizational change.Through an investigation of 82 accounts of issueselling, Dutton and her colleagues identify threetypes of contextual knowledge (labeled "relation-al," "normative," and "strategic") tbat managersused to get issues onto a firm's strategic agenda.Further, managers were observed to use an inter-esting variety of packaging, involvement, and pro-cess-related moves to sell issues to top management.

The Dutton et al. research has a strong focus ontime, process, and action (issue 2 in our frame-work), as well as some attention to issues of cus-tomization, sequencing, and pace (issue 5). Al-though the study links change process to outcomes,as evidenced by the categorization of issue-sellingepisodes as either successful or unsuccessful, thelinkage to organizational performance is not made(issue 3). Although this field study involved theactive participation of senior managers and a num-ber of other managers of an organization, engage-ment between scholars and practitioners as we de-

scribed it here (issue 6) is not present. Further," thestudy was performed in a single organization (ahospital), so the challenge of multiple contexts isnot met (issue 1), nor does the study cross levels ofanalysis. In the same vein, the study does not rep-resent international comparative research (issue 4).

Next, Jeffrey Arthur and Lynda Aiman-Smith, in"Gainsharing and Organizational Learning: AnAnalysis of Employee Suggestions over Time," ex-plore changes in employee suggestions over timewithin the context of a "gainsharing" program.Arthur and Aiman-Smith argue that organizationallearning models provide a useful perspective forunderstanding how these programs work. Theiranalysis of suggestions made during a gainsharingprogram in a large manufacturing plant indicatesthat suggestions based on "first-order learning"(learning that is routine, incremental, and orientedtoward the status quo) were initially high but de-clined over time, and suggestions congruent with"second-order learning" (oriented toward develop-ing new patterns of thought and behavior) becomemore prevalent over time.

Research on this gainsharing plan has a strongfocus on time and process (issue 2) stemming pri-marily from (1) the four-year longitudinal nature ofthe study and (2) the careful examination of pro-cesses of second-order learning. This research pro-vides a good example of linking scholarship andpractice (issue 6) both because of the involvementof union members and management in the design ofthe intervention coupled with the very applied na-ture of the work. Plant performance was examinedon several dimensions, although the direct linkagebetween organizational change and employee sug-gestions is not made (issue 3). Like the study re-ported in the previous article, the research reported


by Arthur and Aiman-Smith was conducted in asingle organization; thus there is no particular fo-cus on multiple contexts (issue 1) or on the inter-national arena (issue 4). However, there is somefocus on different levels of analysis, as individualactions are examined within the context of organi-zational outcomes of the gainsharing program. Al-though the authors have paid some attention toissues of receptivity, customization, sequencing,and pace (issue 5), the research does not engagewith this issue in any substantive way.

In "Organizational Ghange as Discourse; Gommu-nicative Actions and Deep Structures in the Gon-text of IT Implementation," Loizos Heracleous andMichael Barrett report a longitudinal field study ofinformation technology implementation in theLondon Insurance Market. This qualitative, enth-nographic research explores the role of discourse inshaping organizational change processes. This arti-cle provides a tutorial on the development of adiscourse analysis methodology based on herme-neutics and rhetoric and its application to the un-derstanding of processes of organizational change.

Given this methodological purpose, the articleexhibits a strong focus on our time, process, andaction issue (issue 2) as well as on receptivity,customization, sequencing, and pace of change (is-sue 5). The setting for the research embodies mul-tiple contexts (at some level of abstraction), as theLondon Insurance Market is composed of a largenumber of diverse organizations (issue 1). There isthe potential to link process to outcome (issue 3) inthis rich, qualitative analysis, but positivist re-searchers will not necessarily be satisfied that thishas been done in a traditional measurement sense.Additionally, altbough the research setting doescontain non-British firms,-the Heracleous and Bar-rett study does not represent international compar-ative research (issue 4) in the manner that we raisehere. Further, despite the authors' focus on issuesof "practice" in their analysis, we do not view sucha research methodology as providing much linkbetween scholarship and practice (issue 6) at thecurrent time.

An emphasis on organizational communicationsis also shown in "Maximizing Gross-FunctionalNew Product Teams' Innovativeness and Gon-straint Adherence; A Gonflict GommunicationsPerspective," by Kay Lovelace, Debra Shapiro, andLaurie Weingart, who investigated the ability ofcross-functional teams to produce innovations.They studied 43 cross-functional teams to deter-mine how team communication affected team per-formance in terms of new product development.Functional diversity was seen to increase task dis-agreements, but how those disagreements are man-

aged and communicated influenced whether or notthey negatively impacted innovativeness.

Lovelace and her coauthors conducted their re-search in 16 high-technology firms in three differ-ent sectors and aggregated data from individualteam members to the group level. Thus, we con-sider the study's focus on multiple contexts andmultiple levels of analysis (issue 1) to be strong,although ultimately the unit of analysis is thegroup. The research does a good job of linkingscholarship and practice (issue 6), as it involves theactive participation of both top management andorganizational employees in an issue relevant foreffective practice, and findings from the researchwere fed back into the organization. There is afocus on (and there were attempts to measure) teamoutcomes and link those to team process, but thelink to organizational performance is not made interms of the challenge we raise above (issue 3).Despite considerable theoretical focus on organiza-tional processes, the cross-sectional data do notreally address issues of time, process, and action aswe have developed them here (issue 2). Nor is theremuch focus on issue 5 (sequencing and pace) orissue 4 (international comparative research).

The work by Gerardo Okhuysen, "StructuringGhange; Familiarity and Formal Interventions inProblem-Solving Groups," also reports a group-level study. Okluysen conducted a laboratory ex-periment designed to tease out the role of formalinterventions and familiarity (the degree of per-sonal knowledge that group members have regard-ing others) on a group's ability to change and adapt.In general, both familiarity and formal interven-tions were seen to provide the flexibility needed toimprove groups' problem-solving performance.

This research has some focus on process andaction (issue 2), although the time element is notreally present in a laboratory task in tbe manner weraise here. Likewise, there is some focus on linkinggroup processes to group outcomes, but links toorganizational performance (issue 3) are beyondthe scope of laboratory investigations. Laboratoryresearcb, almost by definition, does not addressmultiple contexts and levels of analysis (issue 1).Issues of sequencing and pace of change (issue 5)would be extremely difficult to address in a labo-ratory experiment as well, nor is there much in theway of direct linking of scholarship and practice(issue 6). This link could be provided by the appli-cation of research results from the laboratory toapplied problems, but here the link is at some re-move from the experience of the research itself. Aswith the other articles in our special research fo-rum, international comparative research (issue 4) isnot advanced by this work. The absence of marks


for this article in Table 1 should not be interpretedas suggesting that we do not value laboratory re-search in the organizational change arena. How-ever, we do believe that most laboratory researchwill be unable to contribute to the six analyticalchallenges raised here.

Next, in "The Dynamics of GoUective Leadershipand Strategic Ghange in Pluralistic Organizations,"Jean-Louis Denis, Lise Lamothe, and Ann Langleyexplore leadership and strategic change in thehealth care field. In pluralistic organizations withmultiple objectives and diffuse power bases, a col-lective leadership is needed to effect substantivechange. Utilizing case study methodology, the au-'thors identify three types of collective links thatleaders must manage in order to create organiza-tional change; strategic (among members of theleadership team), organizational (between leadersand their internal constituencies), and environ-mental (between the leadership team and the exter-nal environment).

This research is particularly strong in terms of itsfocus on time, history, process, and action (issue 2),as well as receptivity, sequencing, and pace (issue5). In general, qualitative research may provide anexcellent vehicle for grappling with these chal-lenges, as this study does. The research involvesmultiple contexts and levels of analysis (issue 1). Inaddition, the ongoing collaboration between theinvestigators and the organizational participantsprovides meaningful links between scholarshipand practice (issue 6). Linking change processes toorganizational outcomes is tenuous in this study,however (issue 3), and all of the organizations (hos-pitals) involved in this field study are in Ganada(issue 4).

Nicolaj Siggelkow presents a longitudinal casestudy of Liz Glaiborne, the large manufacturer ofwomen's fashion apparel, in "Ghange in the Pres-ence of Fit; The Rise, the Fall, and the Renaissanceof Liz Glaiborne." He uses this methodology toinvestigate the relationship between tightness of fit(for instance, between strategy and structure andstructure and environment) and tbe firm's reactionsto environmental change. Among other findings,attempts to conserve fit are seen as providing amajor source of resistance to organizational change.Further, tight fits, although they have other advan-tages, make effective change more difficult.

Like Denis and colleagues' study, Siggelkow'swork has a strong focus on time, history, process,and action (issue 2). The role of context and levelsof analysis is also strongly addressed in the study(issue 1). Linking change processes to organiza-tional outcomes (issue 3) does receive some atten-tion. However, despite the inclusion of financial

data, demonstrating such links is problematic forcase studies. There is no contribution to interna-tional comparative work (issue 4). The article pro-vides little concrete link between scholarship andpractice (issue 6), primarily because of the nature ofthe ideas addressed, nor does analysis of this caseprovide much insight into the sequencing and thepace of change activities (issue 5) although, by ex-tension, fit could be viewed as dealing with issuesof receptivity to change.

The next article, by Walter Ferrier, "Navigatingthe Gompetitive Landscape; The Drivers and theGonsequences of Gompetitive Aggressiveness,"provides a detailed analysis of competitive behav-iors among organizations that should advance un-derstanding of these competitive dynamics. Ferriergathered data from rival firms operating in 16 in-dustries over a seven-year period. Organizationalperformance differences are seen as stemming fromthe sequence of competitive actions chosen. Thesecompetitive actions in turn are influenced by char-acteristics of the firms, of the industries, and of thetop management teams making the decisions.

Ferrier's study has a particularly strong focus onlinking process to organizational outcomes (issue3). In addition, it addresses multiple contexts (issue1) as well as time, process, and action (issue 2). Thefocus of the work on patterns of competitive inter-actions over time provides insight into sequencingand pace (issue 5). The link between scholarshipand practice is not emphasized (issue 6), nor doesits use of a large sample of U.S. firms contribute tointernational comparisons (issue 4).

In "The Resource-Based View as a Developmen-tal Growth Process; Evidence from the DeregulatedTrucking Industry," Michael Pettus investigates thefactors contributing to fi-rm growth from a resource-based perspective within a deregulated industry.Strategic actions taken by the firms in the truckingindustry are seen to follow patterns—some ofwhich are more effective than others in fosteringgrowth. It is not resources per se that facilitategrowth, but how they are used.

This article's pattern of focus in terms of ouranalytical challenges is quite similar to that in thework by Ferrier. That is, this type of detailed archi-val analysis has the ability to link change processesover time to organizational performance outcomes(issue 3), provides insights into the sequencing andthe pace of change activities (issue 5), focuses onboth process and action across time (issue 2), and isrich contextually (issue 1). The research does notcontribute to, nor was it designed to contribute to,international comparisons (issue 4). Further, link-ing scholarship and practice is not a feature ofresearch of this variety (issue 6).


Finally, firm evolution is also the theme of thecapstone article provided by Tomo Noda and DavidGollis, "The Evolution of Intraindustry Firm Hetero-geneity; Insights from a Process Study." The au-thors explore firm heterogeneity within an industryusing the cellular telephone service businesses ofthe seven "Baby Bells" as a research setting. Thedegree of heterogeneity over time is seen as beingdetermined by three major forces—a firm's initialbusiness experience in the industry, divergenceforces resulting from ongoing firm experience andcreating organizational momentum that is not nec-essarily the same among firms, and convergenceforces, such as strategic imitation of successfulactions.

This research has a focus on multiple contextsand levels of analysis (issue 1) as well as a strongfocus on time, history, process, and action (issue 2)stemming from the careful historical analysis. Nodaand Gollis have created a study with strong poten-tial for linking scholarship and practice (issue 6), adifficult task with data of this type. They (1) pur-sued extensive involvement with organizational in-formants and (2) highlighted a number of possiblemanagerial actions that can influence the evolutionof firms. This emphasis on managerial actions alsocreates insight into sequencing and pace (issue 5).On the other hand, compellingly linking changeprocesses to organizational performance outcomesis not a strong feature of this study (issue 3), nordoes it engage with the international comparativeresearch (issue 4).

Although the research reported in these ten arti-cles was performed in three different countries, aninspection of Table 1 indicates that none reallyaddresses the international comparative researchchallenge that we raise here. Glearly, work in thatarena remains a dramatic challenge for the field.Further, the difficulties of linking change processesto organizational performance are highlighted bytbis collection. Most of the studies show some linkbetween changes and outcomes, but only two of thearticles include an analysis of organizational per-formance of the sort we call for above. The collec-tive contribution of the special research forumworks in terms of our other research challenges,however, is more encouraging. We hope that read-ers enjoy and learn from this research collection asmuch as we have.

GONGLUDING GOMMENTS

Our assessment in this introduction of some ofthe most pertinent challenges facing the study oforganizational change is suggestive of a new plu-ralism for this field of research. The elements of

this pluralism may entail an even stronger engage-ment between social science and management re-search on change and innovation. It demands theexploration of multiple levels of analysis and thereciprocal study of contexts and actions in chang-ing. The new pluralism should entail a new dedi-cation to time and history and a willingness toreveal the relationship between change processesand outcomes by portraying changes as continuousprocesses and not just detached episodes. In a moreculturally aware, diverse, and global world, schol-ars should extend ourselves beyond the boundariesof our own nations, not just to study diversity,but—where we find it—to reveal homogeneous pat-terns. This effort will task us further not just infinding ways to map such broad trends, but incollaborating with scholars who may have differentintellectual traditions and values than we have. Butthere is yet a still bigger challenge. With this com-mitment to pluralism, organizational change re-search can extend the scope of its scientific baseand simultaneously enhance its leverage in theever-changing world of practice.

Herbert Simon has chided scholars for limitingour ambitions to "what is" knowledge and therebyunderplaying our potential to deliver "how to"knowledge. Never was a field of research such asorganizational change better placed to deliver com-binations of "what is" and "how to" knowledge.But the "how to" knowledge is a question of notjust the more rigorous exposure of continuouschange processes through time and in context, butalso of a more sophisticated and demanding en-gagement with practice. One of the fondest dichot-omies in modernistic conceptions of science hasbeen that of theory and practice. Recently, in ex-amining the future of strategy research in manage-ment, Whittington, Pettigrew, and Thomas (2001)asked their readers to regard theory and practice asa more tightly linked duality. They argued that this"greater sensitivity towards practical complexitywill prompt a more comprehensive notion of ri-gour" (Whittington et al., 2001; 486). There is nosofrness of academic standards here, but a consid-erable raising of the stakes in terms of the socialproduction of knowledge. Woodman (1993) arguedthat the schism between the science of organiza-tional change and the practice of changing organi-zations is the single biggest impediment to progressin effective change management.

The action steps to resolve the old dichotomy oftheory and practice have ofren been portrayed witha request for management researchers to engagewith practitioners through more accessible dissem-ination. But dissemination is ineffective, or evenpossibly irrelevant, if the wrong questions have


been asked. A wider and deeper form of engage-ment between management researchers and practi-tioners would entail experimentation with the co-funding, coproduction, and codissemination ofknowledge. Examples of this kind of partnershipresearch already exist—witness Bartlett andGhoshal's (1989) research .on transnational firms.Porter's (1990) government-sponsored work on na-tional competitiveness, and even closer to ourtheme, the recent INNFORM program on innova-tive forms of organizing (Pettigrew & Fenton, 2000).Further, the Academy of Management Journal re-cently published a special research forum onknowledge transfer between practitioners and aca-demics (Rynes, Bartunek, & Dafr, 2001). The workin that forum should serve to advance our knowl-edge about the dynamics surrounding the researchpartnerships needed in the field of organizationalchange and development.

But a practical science of organizational changefaces more double hurdles than the primary one ofscholarship and relevance. As we have indicatedthroughout this article, there is the need to straddlethe social and organizational sciences; to conceiveof researchers and users as coproducers; to tran-scend current beliefs of scholars and users whilealso engaging with those beliefs; and to supplementdisciplinary knowledge on change rather than at-tempt to supplant that knowledge. As ever in sci-ence as a human activity, the most fundamentalchallenges are to our own scholarly routines.

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Andrew M. Pettigrew is a professor of strategy and organ-ization at Warwick Business School. He has taught andresearched at Yale University, London Business School,and Harvard Business School. He is a fellow of both theAcademy of Management in the United States andUnited Kingdom. In 1999, he was elected a foundingacademician of the Academy of the Social Sciences.

Richard W. Woodman (Ph.D., Purdue University) is theFouraker Professor of Business and Professor of Manage-ment at Texas A&M University, where he teaches organ-izational behavior, organizational change, and researchmethodology. His current research interests focus on or-ganizational creativity and organizational change.

Kim S. Cameron is a professor of organizational behaviorand human resource management at the University ofMichigan Business School. His research on organiza-tional downsizing, organizational effectiveness, corpo-rate quality culture, and the development of managementskills has been published in more than 70 articles and sixbooks. His current research is being funded by theTempleton Foundation and focuses on virtues in organi-zations, such as forgiveness, humility, and compassion,and their relationships to organizational success.

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STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT: … · STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT: CHALLENGES EOR EUTURE RESEARCH AISJDREW M. PETTIGREW University of Warwick RIGHARD