Reflections: How Studying Organizational Change Lost Its Way

ABSTRACT The assumption that organizational change tends to fail continues to stand unchallenged. This is an unsatisfactory situation that impedes not only the evaluation of such change but also studying its management and leadership. The enduring prevalence of this flawed assumption illustrates a failure of scholarship rather than practice. Although failure claims appeared plausible implying objective research and critical scholarship at work, the supporting evidence always eluded the proponents. This paper turns its focus to explain how and why change and transformation have been and continue to be depicted as failing. Seven hopes for future organizational change studies are identified and discussed. These include undertaking further historiographies and moving away from change either tending to succeed or to fail dualisms, towards embracing dualities. As well as, greater acknowledgement of the contextual, processual and dynamic nature of evaluating organizational change. Organizational change lost its way in not appreciating that it was managing change which was depicted as failing. Constructing the authority of change leaders; initially, required the authority of change managers to be corroded. The attribution of failure to managers and success to leaders is currently missing from change agency and change evaluation debates.