Organizational transformation and change management


This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of how organizations navigate transformation and manage change in today’s dynamic business environment. It offers an in-depth exploration of the classic and contemporary theories, frameworks, and research methods underpinning organizational transformation and change management. Students critically examine the drivers, dynamics, and outcomes of change within complex organizations, with particular attention to leadership, culture, and stakeholder engagement. By engaging with real- world cases and academic literature, students will build advanced capabilities to assess, design, and contribute to evidence-based change initiatives relevant to modern organizational challenges.

Course learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Critically evaluate classic and contemporary change theories to determine their applicability and limitations in navigating modern organizational change.
  • Analyze the interplay between organizational culture, leadership, and power dynamics to identify the underlying drivers of resistance and transformation levers.
  • Synthesize complex case study data to diagnose why transformation efforts fail and propose strategic solutions.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Skiff (La Yole) | NG6478 | National Gallery, London

Step 1 – Understanding continuity and change

Discussion on the traditional opposition between stability and change, and that reminder that « into the same river you could not step twice » (Heraclitus). Insistance on the importance of routines when it comes to ontological security (Gidden (1991). Definition of organizational routines as practical accomplishments that can be sources of change through repairing, expanding and striving (Feldman, 1991).

Moneyball: An Unfair Game

« The Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball have difficulty fielding competitive teams due to low revenue and owners who are reluctant to spend money. General manager Billy Beane drafts and develops cheap, young, and talented players, but the Athletics lose the 2001 American League Division Series (ALDS) to the New York Yankees, baseball’s richest and most successful team. For the 2002 season, Beane is given a paltry $41 million budget. Through free agency, three richer teams poach three of Beane’s best players: Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen. Adding insult to injury, Giambi joins the Yankees. Beane is skeptical about traditional baseball scouting methods after the New York Mets drafted him in the first round of the 1980 draft—prompting Beane to decline a Stanford scholarship—only for Beane to have an unimpressive playing career » (Wikipedia)

Using Feldman’s (2000) categories of routine repairing, expanding and striving, unpack the tensions between Billy Beane and his team of scouts. Storytelling aside, who would you generally side with in these situations?

Change, field and pace

Why is change such a threat to the status quo? (Lewin, 1951). Unpacking the idea that « you cannot understand a system until you try to change » (Schein, 1996, p. 34). « It follows that there are two different types of change: one that occurs within a given system which itself remains unchanged, and one whose occurrence changes the system itself » (Watzlawick et al, 1974).

Distinction between Weick & Quinn’s (2000) continuous and episodic changes:

« The phrase ‘episodic change’ is used to group together organizational changes that tend to be infrequent, discontinuous, and intentional. The presumption is that episodic change occurs during periods of divergence when organizations are moving away from their equilibrium conditions. Divergence is the result of a growing misalignment between an inertial deep structure and perceived envi- ronmental demands. This form of change is labeled ‘episodic’ because it tends to occur in distinct periods during which shifts are precipitated by external events such as technology change or internal events such as change in key personnel » (Ibid, p. 365)

« The phrase ‘continuous change‘ is used to group together organizational changes that tend to be ongoing, evolving, and cumulative (…) The distinctive quality of continuous change is the idea that small continuous adjustments, created simultaneously across units, can cumulate and create substantial change. That scenario presumes tightly coupled interdependencies. When interdependencies loosen, these same continuous adjustments, now confined to smaller units, remain important as pockets of innovation that may prove appropriate in future environments » (Ibid., p. 375).

Moneyball: Locker room politics

« Beane tries to trade for the Cleveland Indians’ Karim García, but Cleveland refuses on the advice of team advisor Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate who privately complains to Beane that Cleveland rarely takes his advice, and expresses a belief that baseball teams focus too much on individual players to have success. Intrigued, Beane asks whether Brand would have drafted him in 1980. After Brand reluctantly admits that he would not have drafted Beane until the ninth round, Beane hires Brand. Beane and Brand study sabermetrics, an unconventional scouting philosophy. Unable to afford more talented, expensive players, Beane and Brand focus on maximizing the team’s on-base percentage (OBP) and compromise on skills like base stealing, defense, and batting average. They acquire undervalued players like aging David Justice, injured catcher Scott Hatteberg, and submariner Chad Bradford. Beane fires head scout Grady Fuson, who refuses to abandon his traditional scouting methods. A poor start to the season prompts the media and the team to question Beane’s philosophy. Manager Art Howe, who is angling for a contract extension, disregards Brand’s advice to put the players with the best OBP at the top of the batting order » (Wikipedia)

Using the Weick & Quinn’s (1999) distinction between continuous and episodic change, identify the multiple roles played and the issue of divergence in objectives and discrepancies in paces. From your experience in these different roles, is anyone ‘in the wrong’ here?

Reminder that « there is no one ‘ideal model of an effectively functioning organization' » (Weick & Quinn, 1999, p. 370). There are more or less coherently integrated roles though:

Transformation, pace and scale

  • « Adaptive changes are small, incremental adjustments that organizations and managers make to adapt to daily, weekly, and monthly business challenges »
  • « Transformational change, on the other end of the spectrum, refers to changes that are typically much grander in scope than incremental, adaptive changes. Very often, transformational change refers to a dramatic evolution of some basic structure of the business itself—its strategy, culture, organization, physical structure, supply chain, or processes » (HBS)

John Kotter’s two cents:

« Well over 50% of the companies I have watched fail in this first phase. What are the reasons for that failure? Sometimes executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out of their comfort zones. Sometimes they grossly overestimate how successful they have already been in increasing urgency. Sometimes they lack patience: ‘Enough with the preliminaries; let’s get on with it.’ In many cases, executives become paralyzed by the downside possibilities. They worry that employees with seniority will become defensive, that morale will drop, that events will spin out of control, that short-term business results will be jeopardized, that the stock will sink, and that they will be blamed for creating a crisis.

A paralyzed senior management often comes from having too many managers and not enough leaders. Management’s mandate is to minimize risk and to keep the current system operating. Change, by definition, requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership. Phase one in a renewal process typically goes nowhere until enough real leaders are promoted or hired into senior-level jobs » (Kotter, 2007, p. 5)

Before going further…

  • Read Kotter (2007) Leading Change – Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review.
  • Prepare the “Theranos” case study

Step 2 – Unpacking leadership and followership in the context of change

Understanding leadership as a collective phenomenon (Uhl-Bien et al, 2014) and shifting view from a leader-centric perspective to a leaderful practices one (Raelin, 2011). Unpacking the notion of followership and the importance of followers (Kelley, 1988). Definitions of destructive and unethical leadership (Howell & Avolio, 1992):

Charismatic leaders are celebrated as the heroes of management. By turning around ailing corporations, revitalizing aging bureaucracies, or launching new enterprises, these leaders are viewed as the magic elixir to cure organizational woes and change the course of organizational events. Charismatic leaders achieve these heroic feats by powerfully communicating a compelling vision of the future, passionately believing in their vision, relentlessly promoting their beliefs with boundless energy, propounding creative ideas, and expressing confidence in followers’ abilities to achieve high standards. Charismatic leaders are typically viewed as effective leaders: leaders who inspire extraordinary performance in followers as well as build their trust, faith, and belief in the leader. But is charisma a desirable force for leading an organization? While the virtues of charismatic leaders are extolled in the popular management press, and in a growing number of studies, the potential dark side of these leaders is often ignored (…)

Charisma can lead to blind fanaticism in the service of megalomaniacs and dangerous values, or to heroic self-sacrifice in the service of a beneficial cause. An awareness of this risk is missing from most of the current popular writings on charismatic leadership, which may be interpreted by executives and managers as an unqualified recommendation of such leadership. In this article, we argue that rather than dismiss charisma on the grounds of its associated risks, we need to understand the differences between ethical and unethical charismatic leaders so managers can make informed decisions about recruiting, selecting, and promoting their future organizational leaders who will pursue visions that benefit their organizations rather than simply building their own power base at the expense of the organization.

Theranos case study

  • Regardless of the Theranos scandal, what are your thoughts on Elizabeth Holmes’ following statement? « This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think you’re crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world”
  • Was Elizabeth Holmes a charismatic leader? If so, was she an ethical one? If not, were there red flags the public (or journalists) could have detected?
  • Based on the answers of Elizabeth Holmes in the following interview, how do you consider the intermeshing of leadership, responsibility and accountability?

Why transformation effort fail? (Kotter, 2007)

  • Error 1: Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency

« Well over 50% of the companies I have watched fail in this first phase. What are the reasons for that failure? Sometimes executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out of their comfort zones. Sometimes they grossly overestimate how successful they have already been in increasing urgency. Sometimes they lack patience » (p. 5)

  • Error 2: Not Creating a Powerful Enough Guiding Coalition

« Because the guiding coalition includes members who are not part of senior management, it tends to operate outside of the normal hierarchy by definition. This can be awkward, but it is clearly necessary. If the existing hierarchy were working well, there would be no need for a major transformation. But since the current system is not working, reform generally demands activity outside of formal boundaries, expectations, and protocol » (p. 7)

  • Error 3: Lacking a Vision

« In failed transformations, you often find plenty of plans, directives, and programs but no vision. In one case, a company gave out four-inch-thick notebooks describing its change effort. In mind-numbing detail, the books spelled out procedures, goals, methods, and deadlines. But nowhere was there a clear and compelling statement of where all this was leading. Not surprisingly, most of the employ- ees with whom I talked were either confused or alienated. The big, thick books did not rally them together or inspire change. In fact, they probably had just the opposite effect » (p. 7)

  • Error 4: Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of Ten

« Transformation is impossible unless hun- dreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices. Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo, unless they believe that useful change is possible. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured » (p. 8)

  • Error 5: Not Removing Obstacles to the New Vision

« Communication is never sufficient by itself. Renewal also requires the removal of obstacles. Too often, an employee understands the new vision and wants to help make it happen, but an elephant appears to be blocking the path. In some cases, the elephant is in the person’s head, and the challenge is to convince the individual that no external obstacle exists. But in most cases, the blockers are very real » (p. 9)

  • Error 6: Not Systematically Planning for, and Creating, Short-Term Wins

« Real transformation takes time, and a renewal effort risks losing momentum if there are no short-term goals to meet and celebrate. Most people won’t go on the long march unless they see compelling evidence in 12 to 24 months that the journey is producing expected results. Without short-term wins, too many people give up or actively join the ranks of those peo- ple who have been resisting change (…)

Creating short-term wins is different from hoping for short-term wins. The latter is pas- sive, the former active. In a successful transformation, managers actively look for ways to ob- tain clear performance improvements, establish goals in the yearly planning system, achieve the objectives, and reward the people involved with recognition, promotions, and even money » (p. 9)

  • Error 7: Declaring Victory Too Soon

« Instead of declaring victory, leaders of successful efforts use the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle even bigger problems. They go after systems and structures that are not consistent with the transformation vision and have not been confronted before » (p.10)

  • Error 8: Not Anchoring Changes in the Corporation’s Culture

« change sticks when it becomes “the way we do things around here,” when it seeps into the bloodstream of the cor- porate body. Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradation as soon as the pressure for change is removed » (p.10)

Moneyball: Explaining the numbers

How does Kotter’s (2007) considerations apply to Billy Bean’s approach to transforming the Oakland Athletics? What did he do right so far that you wouldn’t have done yourself? What mistakes did he do that you genuinely think you would have avoided? What should he do next?

Next steps:

  • Read Garvin & Roberto (2007) Change through persuasion. Harvard Business Review
  • Prepare the “Ballet de Paris” case study

Step 3 – Navigating power and resistance in change politics

Reminder of Kurt Lewin’s social field perspective (Lewin, 1951) and illustration with the case of the APA.

Power and politics in organizations

The « Ballet de Paris » case study

  • Group 1: Using Kotter’s (2007) framework, analyze the errors, and strenghts, of Benjamin Millepied’s approach to transforming the POB. What could he have done differently or better? Evidence the relevance of your answer based on details of the case and be as concrete as possible (avoid wishful thinking).
  • Group 2: Using Garvin & Roberto’s (2007) framework, explain why Benjamin Millepied failed, or succeeded, to persuade actors in the POB to change. What could he have done differently or better? Evidence the relevance of your answer based on details of the case and be as concrete as possible (avoid wishful thinking).
  • Group 3: Using Kegan & Laskow Lahey’s (2007) framework, explain why some POB actors refused his attempts at changing the organization. What could he have done differently or better? Evidence the relevance of your answer based on details of the case and be as concrete as possible (avoid wishful thinking).