Workshop on Leading Organizational Change: An Integrated, Multi-Level Perspective - April 17-18, 2015, University of Maryland College Park, MD

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This two day workshop will bring together an international group of scholars from several disciplines -- communication, engineering, management, and sociology, as well as a smaller number of senior, highly experienced, organizational change leaders. The workshop will examine the central question of how to lead change successfully in the future so that change success rates consistently exceed the widely cited 30-50% range, when compared to objectives set by organizations prior to change. Both global organizational surveys, as well as academic studies, find that organizational change often yields a variety of negative results affecting many segments of society including: budget over-runs conservatively estimated at 134% of the original plan; greatly diminished staff resources that include high stress levels, demanding workloads, and negative emotional reactions; and loss of valuable time with little to no organizational gain in competitiveness, goal achievement or business value. The goals of the workshop are to identify, examine, research, discuss, and begin to achieve consensus on: 1) The contextual factors, operating at multiple levels, and affecting the success rates of organizational change, both episodic and continuous; 2) Different roles played by change leadership in initiating, facilitating, implementing, and/or sustaining change 3) Different methods, processes, and styles of leadership making change success likely; 4) The multi-level effects within organizational change and the processes through which these effects impact the success of leading organizational change. Intellectual Merit: This workshop comes at a critical point in research on organizational change. On one hand, a major type of change, episodic change, is described as infrequent, discontinuous, intentional and led from the top down in terms of the organizational hierarchy. Although this change is occurring more and more frequently, many senior change leaders report serious deficits in their organizations' knowledge and capabilities to enact change successfully. On the other hand, a second major type of change, continuous change, is believed by many change scholars to possess high potential for improving the quality, innovation and success rate of organizational change. Continuous change is characterized as ongoing, evolving, cumulative, emergent rather than planned, and generally enacted from the bottom up. Yet to date, there is limited conceptual research on continuous change and virtually no empirical studies to strengthen our understanding of how it develops, the current success rates, and the types of change leadership that are likely to be more or less successful in shaping such change. Thus, this workshop provides a valuable opportunity to enhance and extend our knowledge about factors affecting the success of leading organizational change, both episodic and continuous, and to decrease the negative effects of change that affect many aspects of society. Broader Impact: This workshop includes expert participants of different academic disciplines, business functional areas, genders, nationalities, and industries. We expect the research and ideas discussed at the workshop to be presented and published in a variety of outlets and media, making them generally available to academic scholars, senior leaders, doctoral students, change managers, professional associations and the public at large. As a result, the workshop will not only advance research but also inform practice about leading organizational change successfully.