Organization change failure, deep structures and temporality: Appreciating Wonderland

Abstract

Organization change failure has typically been viewed as occurring when expected outcomes of change have not been met. This view downplays key, but frequently hidden organizational dimensions such as deep structures and temporality. In this article, drawing inspiration from the story of Alice in Wonderland, we distinguish between surface-level intervention approaches to change, deeper process approaches and, deeper yet, structuration approaches, and suggest the different ways they approach change failure as well as the implications of these. On the basis of our exploration we propose a three-fold way forward: adopting a process-based, empirically grounded and reflective approach to understanding change and its often-failed outcomes; adopting methodologies that can capture deep structures and temporal dimensions; and incorporating expanded conceptions of time as a multi-level, nested construct. We illustrate our ideas of deep structures and temporality by drawing from a particularly important illustration of long-term successful change that includes multiple short-term failures, that of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States (NASA).

Identifying and modeling the antecedents of counterproductive knowledge behavior: a three-study analysis

“…From a managerial perspective, avoiding the KM system counts as CKB because the knowledge has limited transferability; however, the employee may think it expedient and helpful to share directly with a single colleague. A real-life example of such a difference in perspective is an employee at NASA discussing their choice not to use a new system because the risk of unknown bugs may jeopardize the life of astronauts (Heracleous and Bartunek, 2020). Thus, we take a managerial perspective on CKB to allow a uniform approach while noting the potential for other equally valid views.…”

Temporal dimensions of knowledge exchanges in horizontal knowledge networks

“…There are several future research avenues that may result from this study. Our analysis was limited to three dimensions of time (timescale, timeliness and time modalities) so future research may tackle various aspects of temporality such as temporal homogeneity, temporal heterogeneity, temporal disjuncture and other dimensions of time (Heracleous & Bartunek, 2020;Kunisch, Bartunek, Mueller, & Huy, 2017) . It would be useful, for example, to study how individuals or even organisations in networks move between knowledge integration and knowledge differentiation taking into consideration the aforementioned dimensions of time.…”

“…According to Nicholson et al's (2018) contribution conceptual framework, this paper makes an incremental contribution, which is measured against what knowledge already exists and by developing further what is currently known. In this study, we respond to recent calls for a more longitudinal approach that addresses the temporal perspective in examining knowledge exchanges in horizontal knowledge networks (Agostini, Nosella, Sarala Riikka, Spender, & Wegner, 2019;Clegg, Josserand, Mehra, & Pitsis, 2016;Dawson & Sykes, 2019;Heracleous & Bartunek, 2020;Nyberg et al, 2020). The central question here is: How do reciprocal exchanges influence knowledge exchange in a network over time?…”

Heracleous, Loizos: Uncovering the Underlying Processes of Change

“…Third, the constructive potential of discourse is based primarily on its deeper structures and on the consonance of surface (communicative) actions with these structures (Heracleous, 2006b). Subsequent conceptual (Heracleous & Bartunek, 2020) and methodological contributions have built on and advanced these insights.…”

“…In this context, meaning and therefore social reality is constructed, sustained, and changed through social interaction (Bourdieu, 1977;Giddens, 1984;Silverman, 1970), lending a processual perspective to Heracleous' methodological approach. Moving beyond the "what" to the "how" and "why," Heracleous' work brings forward the complexity of organizational life by focusing on deep, underlying, and implicit processes shaping organizational change, as well as organizational life more broadly (Heracleous & Bartunek, 2020). Seeking to uncover actors' first-order understandings, as they manifest in their actions, discourses, and material expressions, and to develop frameworks that take account of these understandings, Heracleous' work has spurred new developments in theory and research that have led us to view change in new and surprising ways.…”