This paper examines potency, defined as the collective belief in a group that it can be effective, and its role in determining group effectiveness. The paper illustrates the construct and reviews its origins. The distinctiveness of potency from efficacy and from other collective and motivational constructs is described. The measurement of potency is also examined. The paper concludes with a presentation of a conceptual framework for understanding the determinants of potency and with a discussion of future theory, research and practice.

As organizational leaders undertake cultural transformations to make themselves more competitive, they engender complex responses by those who lead and experience them. Some are intended, others not, and the latter, the unanticipated side effects of cultural agendas, can undermine-even defeat-the intended change process. Drawing on their observations of a diverse array of companies and managers that have undergone cultural transformations, the authors identify four leading side effects: (a) ambivalent authority, manifest in such directives as "ordering" employees to become "empowered"; (b) polarized images, evident in rhetoric that casts all that is new as progressive and all that is old as regressive; (c) disappointment and blame, seen in finger-pointing up and down the management hierarchy for the inevitable setbacks that accompany change; and (d) behavioral inversion, displayed in empowerment slogans that mask a reassertion of hierarchy. Cultural transformations generate fewer unwanted side effects when top managers openly address them during the transformation process.

RA was dramatically reduced following the intervention. A custom designed process to identify candidates most likely to succeed substantially improved resident retention in a demanding academic training program.

The COVID-19 pandemic put significant strain on societies and their resources, with the healthcare system and workers being particularly affected. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers the unique possibility of improving the response to a pandemic as it emerges and evolves. Here, we utilize the WHO framework of a pandemic evolution to analyze the various AI applications. Specifically, we analyzed AI from the perspective of all five domains of the WHO pandemic response. To effectively review the current scattered literature, we organized a sample of relevant literature from various professional and popular resources. The article concludes with a consideration of AI’s weaknesses as key factors affecting AI in future pandemic preparedness and response.

Leaders help organizations perceive possible futures (through the lens of past experiences) to make intelligent decisions in the present. As Whitehead [1, p. 3] has written: "The present is all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future." However, with the turbulence surrounding and invading organizations, this "holy ground" is increasingly being experienced as overwhelming, chaotic and anxiety filled. The very boundaries of organizations and industries are being significantly reshaped, calling into question the identity of the organizational entity that is being challenged to "learn" from its experience. For example, consider aerospace managers adapting to a new geopolitical world in the waning years of the cold war. Working with fastchanging emergent technologies, the organizational context shifted from RCA to GE, to Martin Marietta, to Lockheed, all within the space of a decade. Is it any wonder as the turbulence increases that individuals become less identified with the largest systems -the company, the division, etc. -and begin to focus on the project or their own job.In addition to confusions about "who" is learning, the processes of learning from one's experience may be both too slow and too embedded in rapidly obsolescing frameworks. Like the proverbial generals fighting the last war, leaders risk extracting the right lessons but needing to apply them in a dramatically altered situation. Paradoxically, we need the capability to see into the future when conditions make it difficult to do so.With the increased pace of change, in addition to losing our bearings about where we are, we may be losing our sense of location in time. In response, people increasingly flee the present, either to nostalgic wishes for an idealized past or to a simplistic, ideologically driven future. Emery and Trist have explicated the maladapative defences against turbulence as segmentation, superficiality and dissociation. They describe these mechanisms as follows:(1) They are mutually facilitating defences, not mutually exclusive.

To achieve faster organic growth, firms need to change their prevailing narrative about innovation from growth denying to growth enabling. This requires changing the system through which the work of innovation gets done. This article describes the work systems model of organizational change and shows how a leadership team can select the most influential elements of the system to make a desired narrative a reality. Four elements of the work system are especially effective at encouraging a growth-affirming narrative: leadership commitment to innovation talent, prudent risk-taking, customer-centric innovation, and aligning metrics and incentives.

This article discusses the process of learning to perform organization development (OD) work full time. In studying this the authors conducted a "clinical" analysis ofa journal kept by one of the authors during a 20-month tenure as an OD manager, and of the experience and training of both authors in this field (one a "retired" OD manager, both professors of organizational behavior). Many personal and professional struggles were revealed in this research, which are integral to the development of the self in the role of the OD practitioner. The article offers ways of conceptualizing and handling these struggles, and thereby the work of practicing OD.

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