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Problems and paradoxes in a model of punctuated organizational change

Administrative Science Quarterly, June, 1997 by M. Anjali Sastry

To extend our understanding of organizational change, I take an alternative approach: I examine an existing theory in detail, formalizing it to investigate how well the theory accounts for the phenomena its authors set out to explain. My focus is Tushman and Romanelli's (1985) theory of organizational change, in which organizations undergo occasional dramatic revolutions or punctuations to overcome organizational inertia and set a new course for the organization to follow. Because it is relatively detailed and explicit, the causal argument Tushman and Romanelli present serves as an ideal foundation for a systematic exploration. My approach is designed to examine the completeness, consistency, and parsimony of the causal explanation laid out in an existing theoretical model. One precedent for such an approach is Peli and colleagues' (1994) work using first-order logic to analyze organizational theory. Although first-order logic has proved useful in identifying gaps in the logical structure of a natural-language theory, explicitly causal theories cannot easily be represented with the approach (Peli et al., 1994: 586-587). Because action is central to theories of organizational change, a causal modeling approach suitable for capturing dynamics is needed instead. I use such a method here to formalize verbal descriptions of causal relationships.

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Punctuated Change Models

Tushman and Romanelli's 1985 paper described an evolutionary process through which organizations alternate between two modes of behavior. During long, stable periods of an organization's life, labeled convergence, change is restricted to incremental adjustments that consolidate already-chosen strategic orientations. The organization experiences revolutionary shifts in relatively infrequent and short periods of dramatic changes, called reorientations or recreations. Others have identified both theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence that lend support to the proposition that organizations change strategic orientation through such rare transformative events (e.g., Miller and Friesen, 1980; Greenwood and Hinings, 1988; Gersick, 1991; Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett, 1993). In explaining punctuated change, researchers have devised new ways to juxtapose, differentiate, and reconcile divergent models of organizations. In particular, by showing how the same organization may exhibit two different modes of behavior -- adaptive and inertial -- at different times, punctuated change models provide a means for integrating the strategic management and adaptationist views of organizations as readily changeable (Thompson, 1967; March, 1981) with the population ecology view, in which environmental selection is the primary mechanism for changes in organizational populations (Hannan and Freeman, 1989).

Punctuated change models have widely influenced contemporary thinking about how organizations change. For instance, over the past decade, Tushman, Romanelli, and their colleagues have developed a productive research program built on issues of technology management and executive leadership (e.g., Tushman, Virany, and Romanelli, 1985; Anderson and Tushman, 1990; Keck and Tushman, 1963; Romanelli and Tushman, 1994). Other recent work has integrated the punctuated change thesis with such perspectives as the clock-resetting process, in which organizations enjoy increased freedom in the period immediately following a revolution (Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett, 1993), a capabilities-based view of Schumpeterian change (Levinthal, 1992), an organizational learning model in which aspiration adjustment leads to lower performance over time (Lant and Mezias, 1992), a theoretical model of organizational downsizing (Freeman and Cameron, 1993), and the coevolutionary view, in which technology and organization influence each other over time (Van de Ven and Garud, 1994)

Empirical research into the pattern of punctuated organizational change has found support for the theory in a range of industries, including airlines (Kelly and Amburgey, 1991; Miller and Chen, 1994), savings and loans (Haveman, 1992), minicomputers (Tushman, Virany, and Romanelli, 1985), cement (Anderson and Tushman, 1990), and newspapers (Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett, 1993). Yet, as Romanelli and Tushman (1994) noted, processes within the organization that shape convergence and punctuations are relatively poorly understood. For instance, because failed attempts to undergo revolutionary change have been examined at the industry level rather than at the organizational level, and rarely at the subunit level (Romanelli and Tushman, 1994: 1160), most tests of the theory have not been able to identify how decisions or processes within the organization affect the successfulness of change efforts. Outcomes of successful change attempts -- discontinuous changes in domains of organizational activity -- provide evidence that revolutionary changes do take place but do not necessarily validate the causal theory put forward to explain punctuated change or delimit the conditions required for success. Romanelli and Tushman (1994: 1160) concluded that more research is needed to explore the theory systematically and "to elaborate and test the full implications of the model."

Business Services Industry

Problems and paradoxes in a model of punctuated organizational change

Administrative Science Quarterly, June, 1997 by M. Anjali Sastry

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