Suggests five footnotes to organizational change, emphasizing the relation between change and more generally adaptive behavior, the routine nature of organizational change, change in response to simple environmental events, the surprises produced by ordinary changes occurring in a confusing world, and the implicit altruism of organizational…

This study's purpose was to test whether evaluative judgments concerning a job's motivating potential result from a piecemeal or a categorization process. Results showed that categorization clues heavily influenced respondents' judgments. Organizational change efforts may be particularly effective when specifically aimed at introducing prototypic…

Arguing from a transaction costs perspective, this paper contends that local organizational cultures distinct from shared background cultures exist relatively infrequently. The relationship between local organizational culture and organizational efficiency is discussed, and it is concluded that changing organizations are more adaptive than is…

Reviews current organizational decline perspectives. Presents a conceptual framework that redefines organizational decline and outlines a decline model with five stages: blindness to change, inaction, faulty action, crisis, and dissolution. The model aims to improve understanding of basic threats to organizational survival. Includes 54 references.…

Compares applied economic models and an institutional model in an empirical study of financial reporting practice at the Fortune 200 between 1962 and 1984. Findings indicate that the institutional model adds significant explanatory power over and above the models currently dominating the applied economics literature. Includes 47 references. (MLH)

Successful change projects were found to have a preponderance of favorable forces in each of three phases of change: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Favorable and unfavorable forces were simple opposites. (Author/IRT)

This study attempted to ascertain whether selected personality and situational variables were predictive of the relative rationality of a subject's response to organizational change. (Author)

Investigates organizational mortality in the early American telephone industry, in which thousands of companies proliferated and failed under conditions of technological change. When technologies are systemic, technological change does not necessarily favor advanced organizations. The study used archival data from early Pennsylvania and Iowa…

The experiment reported here was conducted during a 12-month period at four plants owned by the same company. Managers were given artificial reports about previous findings obtained in implementing job enlargement and job rotation programs. Led to expect higher productivity as a result of these organizational innovations, the managers increased…

Examines the impact of an organizational development effort on organizational performance. Significant positive changes in target group attitudes and perceptions were found, as was a significant positive change in quality of output and in profit. (Author)

An ethnomethodological approach is developed as a means of enriching theories of succession. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated by examining a detailed account of the first occurrence of succession in an emerging social organization in which succession took the form of status degradation. (Author/IRT)

Discusses the destructive aspects of reorganization that must take place if change is to be successful. The 1970-71 reorganization of the U.S. Post Office Department is used as a model. (Author)

Clarifies the meaning of organizational decline by delimiting it from related constructs (turbulence, stagnation, and environmental decline). Investigates certain organizational attributes associated with turbulence and decline in 334 higher education institutions over a six-year period. Results suggest that organizational attributes associated…

Student participants at two universities played multisession simulation games involving the development of 18 organizations. Post-session surveys of 583 participants indicated that organizational effectiveness became more important to participants as the organizations developed. This suggests that future organizational effectiveness studies should…