Previous research on transactive memory has found a positive relationship between transactive memory system development and group performance in single project laboratory and ad hoc groups. Closely related research on shared mental models and expertise recognition supports these findings. In this study, the author examined the relationship between transactive memory systems and performance in mature, continuing groups. A group's transactive memory system, measured as a combination of knowledge stock, knowledge specialization, transactive memory consensus, and transactive memory accuracy, is positively related to group goal performance, external group evaluations, and internal group evaluations. The positive relationship with group performance was found to hold for both task and external relationship transactive memory systems.

We empirically explore the legitimating accounts for and against policies precluding workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, focusing on how agents working at both the national level and within organizations use broader cultural accounts in building their legitimating accounts in local settings. The diffusion perspective in institutional theory has portrayed how agents import “ready-to-wear” cultural accounts. In contrast, translation theory depicts how agents interpret and adapt cultural accounts as they fashion them into legitimating accounts for a local setting. An alternative would theorize accounts that are neither strictly borrowed nor idiosyncratically tailored. We advanced a third perspective, drawing on frame analysis as it is used in social movement theory. Framing theory attends to both the importance of cultural building blocks and the embedded ways in which agents relate to and shape systems of meaning and mobilize collective action to change social arrangements. We find that legitimating accounts are intertwined with the construction of social identities, which serve to legitimate, on the one hand, an account maker's participation in the discourse and set of claims, and on the other hand, the involvement of proponents and crucial audiences. We suggest that the mobilizing potential of legitimating accounts rests in part on their messages becoming “autocommunicational,” so that listeners identify themselves with the message.

Recent research on group demography demonstrates that an increase in demographic diversity has both positive and negative effects on group effectiveness. These studies have linked increased group diversity with an increase in creative thinking and innovation, a decrease in intra‐group cohesion, and an increase in intragroup conflict. The cognitive processing framework proposed in this paper integrates these results into a coherent understanding of the effects of diversity on groups. The cognitive framework provides an explanation of group diversity effects and it suggests ways to minimize the negative effects of group diversity.

We review research on and the practice of Organization Development. Organization development has been an active area for research during the past decade, and current research benefits from well‐developed theoretical frameworks of organization change. Organization Development has also been a fertile ground for the development of change practice methodologies during this time. To organize this chapter, we distinguish between change process and implementation theories. Change process theories, which typically guide research on change, are sorted using Van de Ven and Poole's (1995) typology of teleologic, life‐cycle, dialectic, and evolutionary motors for change. Likewise, we categorize implementation theories, which typically guide the practice of change, by their underlying motors of participation, self‐reflection, action research, and narrative/rhetorical intervention. We identify some contemporary organization development interventions in terms of their implementation motors and indicate ways implementation and change process motors may complement each other. Despite their common interest in change, and complementary theoretical motors, we find that change process research and implementation research occupy relatively separate intellectual spheres. This divide is hindering further theory development regarding change. We outline some possible causes of the divide and propose strategies to bridge it.

Leading social change in organizations is a difficult and politically dangerous balancing act. These risks increase if the social change in question directly challenges accepted societal and organizational norms. This article examines the racial integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team as an example of a successful social change that challenged organizational and societal norms. The seven-step method used by Dodgers general manager, Branch Rickey, was guided by an understanding of the social implications of integration. Rickey's method also relied on an awareness of the differing perspectives of important stakeholders. This article pays particular attention to the linking and sequencing of action learning strategies used during the change.