Preface

This volume of Research in Organizational Change and Development continues the tradition of providing insightful and thought provoking chapters. The chapters in the volume represent a commitment to maintaining the high quality of work that many of you have come to expect from this publication. This volume continues the long established tradition of providing a special platform for scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners to share new insightful and thought provoking research-based insights. The volume includes chapters by international diverse colleagues including W. Warner Burke, Allan H. Church, David Coghlan, Shannon E. Finn Connell, Matthew J. Del Giudice, Nicole M. Ginther, Emmanuel M. Kalargiros, Rebecca Levine, Michael R. Manning, Alyson Margulies, Jennifer Novakoske, Susanne Ollila, Christopher T. Rotolo, Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, Luca Solari, Michael W. Stebbins, Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi, Michael D. Tuller, Judy L. Valenzuela, Ilene C. Wasserman, and Anna Yström. The themes and areas covered by these authors are as diverse as their disciplinary and occupational backgrounds.

The drive toward understanding and mastering the process of organizational development and change (OD&C) in a rapidly changing environmental context has been and continues to be a driving force in the development of the field. Action research, collaborative management research, and learning mechanisms as the foundation of OD&C work seem to be continuously utilized and advanced. Reviewing a set of individual choice points related to science and practice or research and action across a 50-plus year career and through the lens of learning agility provides a longitudinal perspective on organization development and change and addresses the tension between science and practice and focuses on the integration known today as evidence-based practice (the contribution by Warner Burke). Shifting from an individual longitudinal perspective to an organizational longitudinal perspective, we view 35 years of action research practices within Kaiser Permanente as an illustration that our field can provide significant added value to business over time and in a rapidly changing environmental context, such as healthcare (the contribution by Michael W. Stebbins and Judy L. Valenzuela).

We continue to develop existing frameworks and develop new ones. Collaborative management research as one of the foundations of the field is enriched by exploring the role of sense-making as an integral part of the organization development and change efforts (the contribution by Luca Solari, David Coghlan, and Abraham B. (Rami) Shani). The emerging perspective of design thinking seems to provide a new framework, within which we can explore the organization development and change process (the contribution by Shannon Connell and Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi). Coupled together, these developments provide new ways to improve organization development practice and generate new theoretical insights.

We return to some of the fundamentals in the field and gain new understanding of them. The role of individuals and personality are being revisited to generate some new insights about the management of change and development and a new framework is advanced (the contribution by Allan H. Church, Christopher T. Rotolo, Alyson Margulies, Matthew J. Del Giudice, Nicole M. Ginther, Rebecca Levine, Jennifer Novakoske, and Michael D. Tuller). Diversity and dialogic OD are pushed to the forefront of opportunities and emerging challenges in the field (the contribution by Ilene C. Wasserman).

We continue to search and experiment with contemporary integrative frameworks and consider new perspectives about different ways to enhance creativity and organization innovation. Brainstorming is revisited, re-introduced, and re-framed as an important way to enhance divergent thinking that can impact creativity, innovation, and organizational change (the contribution by Emmanuel M. Kalargiros and Michael R. Manning). Ways to create responsive business processes via open innovation have been evolving in the field over the past 25 years (the contribution by Susanne Ollila and Anna Yström). As such, some of the chapters in this volume continue the tradition of building on past trajectories and bring new mappings of the evolving nature of the field and emerging conceptualizations that can guide practice and research. Others explore the impact of diversity, personality, sense making, and design thinking on organization change and development. Yet others explore the role that learning mechanisms played during a 35-year action research orientation and the impact on the nature and success of the firm’s ability to respond to an evolving competitive business context.

From our editorial perspective, one of the most wonderful things about our work on this series is that it always brings surprises, whether in the form of a new way of thinking about old problems or a different way to think about opportunities we didn’t know existed. The series has been around long enough to substantiate the claim that we have published some true classics in the field of organization development and change. While it’s too early to say whether the chapters in this volume contain new classics, there are certainly some interesting and worthwhile pieces to read that have the potential to become classics at some time in the future. In addition, collectively, the volume represents tremendous diversity: multiple generations of authors including a senior founder of the field and the division, well-established thought leaders, our largest co-author team of scholar-practitioners of a chapter in the series to date, and colleagues at various stages of career including newly minted OD&C researchers and practitioners; colleagues from inside and outside the United States; historical pieces that are foundational and current work that opens up new avenues of inquiry, and; multiple research methodologies. Together, the eight manuscripts in this volume provide an intriguing and timely collection. They represent a unique blend of theory and practice, research and action, intervention and research, revisiting traditional practices and introducing new ones, longitudinal studies and the examination of an intervention’s impact, current issues, and even a proposed new paradigm for organization development and change. This real work occurs in practice, as members of our community come together to learn from experience and craft new approaches to lead and manage organization change and development. The work that appears in this volume confirms that there is no shortage of ideas, activities, interventions, research-based insights, and energy around organizational change and development. We are continuously making progress in our understanding of change, development, and organization development and change; we are continuously asking questions the answers to which find ways to make a difference, and; we are continuously exploring alternative research methodologies and the role that they can play. It is our hope, that as you read through this volume, you will consider your own thoughts and practice and possible contributions to the field and contact us to suggest topics for future volumes.