We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis-agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (contradictions)-as an essential driving force of institutional change.We thank Eric Abrahamson, Joy Beatty, Naomi Olson, Maureen Scully, Marc Ventresca, and participants in the 1999 Institutions, Conllicts, and Change Conference at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, for their helpful comments and encouragement. We are also grateful to Dev Jennings and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations.

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Based on psychological and neurobiological theories of core affective experience, we identify a set of direct and indirect paths through which affective feelings at work affect three dimensions of behavioral outcomes: direction, intensity, and persistence. First, affective experience may influence these behavioral outcomes indirectly by affecting goal level and goal commitment, as well as three key judgment components of work motivation: expectancy judgments, utility judgments, and progress judgments. Second, affective experience may also affect these behavioral outcomes directly. We discuss implications of our model.

In this article, the authors identify six theories (anxiety theory, social identity theory, acculturation theory, role conflict theory, job characteristics theory, and organizational justice theory) to explain problems in managing the merger and acquisition (M&A) organizational change process. These theories have implicitly or explicitly formed the basis for the past M&A literature. The authors integrate these theories into one conceptual framework that clearly delineates unique sources of problems that can emerge in different stages of M&A integration, their psychological and behavioral effects on employees, and prescriptions to address the problems. The framework can be used as a guide for M&A integration leaders to systematically plan interventions to smooth the human integration process. It also provides a foundation for future theoretical and empirical M&A integration research.