The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

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

As ideals about what is worth having, doing, and being, values are core to organizational functioning. Various organizational elements, such as design, identity, and culture, as well as organizational practices, are infused with values, pointing to the critical role values play during organizational change. While we know that the congruence between established values and those of prescribed changes influences change outcomes, our understanding of the role of values in organizational change processes remains largely speculative. In this paper, I outline how taking a value-centered approach to organizational change can enhance our understanding of organizational change processes.

Subtraction neglect is a real problem in our lives and organizations. Additive change, increasing the number of activities, tasks, and goals, is the unrelenting norm. Subtractive change removes things. For people and organizations starved from bandwidth, and change scholars and practitioners seeking new capabilities, subtractive change offers opportunity to make organizational change both kinder to people and more effective. I offer a few ideas for promoting subtractive change in scholarship and practice: the difference between Virtuous Subtraction realizing value and Exploitative Subtraction deflecting burdens on to others; the essential roles of reflective practice, awareness of organizational history, and mindful attention to stakeholders in Virtuous Subtraction; and Anticipatory Subtraction where practices are time-marked with start and/or stop dates to call attention to opportunities for review and updating; and legacy-building practices to respect the value served by subtracted practices.

This essay discusses how views of organizational change and innovation have traditionally focused on planned episodic change that focuses on rational, strategic, top-down and consensus-directed interventions following teleological or regulatory process models. Future scholarship seems to be focusing more on unplanned continuous organizational changes that emphasize experiential, emergent, bottom-up, pluralistic social movements following dialectical and evolutionary models of change. While planned-episodic and unplanned-continuous change may appear to be opposing views of organizational change, they are entangled in one-another, and provide a rich agenda of future scholarship on processes of organizational change and innovation.

Technology-mediated change management (TMCM) refers to an organization's use of digital technologies to facilitate change implementation. The use of digital technology is deeply penetrating change practice. However, alarmingly, few have theorized about or empirically investigated TMCM. A rich body of research informs change management, however, less is known about how technologies are changing the nature of managing the change itself. We stimulate new conversations on this topic by discussing how TMCM provides both valuable benefits and creates new risks in terms of the (a) adaptiveness, (b) personalization, and (c) openness of the change process. TMCM requires urgent attention as it has the potential to help shape the future of change research and practice. We call for scholarship that is reflexive about both the benefits and risks associated with TMCM and we offer directions for research in this relatively new area that may very well determine the future of our field.

How can Organization Development and Change (ODC) research and practice help create healthy, vibrant, and humane organizations and communities? This has been a guiding question for the field of ODC throughout a year-long series of activities (e.g., design meetings, webinars, and informal dialogues) linked to the 50^th anniversary celebration of the ODC Division of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we provide our own reflections on this unfolding dialogue by proposing that ODC's future can be bolstered by leveraging its legacy and historical strengths as the basis to engage in a systematic approach for doing prospective theory-building ( Cooperrider, 2021), particularly on grand challenges like the transition to the Anthropocene. That is, we advocate for building theory that focuses on intentionally co-creating a better future rather than take it for granted or merely describing (and projecting) the past. In doing so, we believe ODC scholars and practitioners will be better equipped to create what we refer to as generative scholarship and write the next chapter for ODC as a revitalizing force in the world.

In this essay, we are arguing that the field of organizational change and development is positioned to face the challenges of researching change and changing for the next decade and beyond. The core values in the field—that researching change and enacting changing are collaborative ventures undertaken in the present tense where the outcome is actionable knowledge, and that it serves the practical ends of organizations and generates the knowledge of how organizations change—are of utmost relevant for the emerging workplace and organizations. Through differentiated consciousness interiority challenges the polarizations that beset the field (between science and practice) and provides an integrative process focused on the operations of human knowing.

How are organizations embracing the emotional complexity of the emerging organizational landscape? More specifically, how do leaders develop the capacity necessary to infuse the organization's emotional circuitry with renewed energy at a time of transformation? In this essay, I posit that vulnerability can be the threshold for change capacity in institutional work, fortifying leaders' developmental trajectories and transforming organizing and organizations. While paradoxical, the regenerative nature of vulnerability yields change capacity requisite of navigating the emotional complexity leaders encounter on their developmental journeys.

The study examined the association between transformational leadership and organizational identification of employees. The relationship between transformational leadership and psychological empowerment and the possible mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational identification of employees was also studied. A hypothesized model was developed to examine the relationship between the constructs. Sample for the study comprised 199 employees from the IT sector. Instruments used were Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire, Smidts et al.’s (2001) Organizational Identification Questionnaire and Spreitzer’s (1995) Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS and structural equation modeling in AMOS. It was indicated that transformational leadership had positive and significant impact on organizational identification as well as psychological empowerment of employees. Psychological empowerment acting as a mediator between these two constructs was established. It was found that the developed model would pave way for more attention toward psychological empowerment among leaders and employees in organization.

As positive nontask behavior, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a well-known concept that has been investigated by numerous studies. However, weakness in the research stream is viewing this concept from the perspective of the actor. In this study, OCB is considered as a social activity that assists actors’ survival in their organizations, and how OCB affects ostracism that effectively reflects belonging in the organization is investigated. Moreover, to identify the relationship in detail, three different independent variables are used, including OCB, OCB aggregate gap, and OCB profile similarity, using social exchange theory and similarity attraction theory. The analysis is conducted using samples from 210 employees who work for Korean companies. The results indicate that OCB profile similarity has a stronger effect on reducing ostracism than the absolute level of OCB and the OCB aggregate gap.

The generative change model identifies the underlying process that has produced success in a variety of Dialogic Organization Development (OD) and large group intervention cases. It works with widespread stakeholder engagement and self-organizing properties of human systems, to create rapid, transformational change. It appears better suited to managing complex, adaptive challenges than traditional planned change. The paper briefly describes the model and explains one aspect of it in more depth, the use of purpose, instead of vision, to guide the change process.