Momentum and Revolution in Organizational Adaptation

Organizations tend to be slow in adapting to their environments and often resist change, even when their environments threaten them with extinction. It was thought to be appropriate to study reversals in the direction of change rather than to study resistance to change. A tentative model of organiza...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Academy of Management journal 1980-12, Vol.23 (4), p.591-614
Main Authors: Miller, Danny, Friesen, Peter H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptability
Adaptation
Hypotheses
Organization theory
Organizational behavior
Organizational change
Revolutions
Statistical analysis
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Organizations tend to be slow in adapting to their environments and often resist change, even when their environments threaten them with extinction. It was thought to be appropriate to study reversals in the direction of change rather than to study resistance to change. A tentative model of organizational adaptation has been designed and tested. The model has 3 related tenets that are based on previous theoretical and empirical works in the literature on organizations: 1. Momentum is anticipated to be a primary factor in organizational evolution. 2. Momentum is probably going to coexist among a great many variables of strategy and structure simultaneously. 3. Organizational adaptation is also likely to be characterized by periods of dramatic revolution. The change in 24 structural and strategy making variables over time was analyzed by a study of 26 companies. Organizations were found to resist reversals in the direction of change in strategy and structure. Two extremes were demonstrated: periods of momentum in which little or no trend is reversed, and dramatic times of revolution when many trends are reversed.
ISSN:0001-4273
1948-0989
DOI:10.5465/255551