Sanding down the Edges

Abstract

In contrast to population ecology and new institutionalist approaches that cite the external environment as the culprit for inertia, this article steps inside the organization to show how internal processes render change ineffective. It is argued that the very same processes described in the literature as prerequisites for success are paradoxically those that make change less likely to occur. Detailed examples of failed organizational change from a Fortune 50 corporation and a metropolitan teaching hospital illustrate the ways in which the organizational system not only sands down the sharp edges of ambitious change agendas, but also uses the change process itself as fuel for perpetuating the status quo. The final section relates these basic paradoxes to deeper roots of change in social systems and suggests ways of changing the way we change in light of the resiliency and resistance of the organizational system.