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The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of transformational organizational change that occurred over time in a small manufacturing firm using the conceptual framework of organizational change and archetypes.

This longitudinal study – which is based on six cycles of interviews with all members of the firm over a two‐year period – examined how the change attempt was perceived by the strategic leadership, middle‐level managers, and lower‐level employees.

The findings suggest that the pace of archetypal change is influenced by organization members' experience with, and capacity to, assimilate the change; that, sequentially, new structures and systems are implemented prior to new interpretive schemes; and that unresolved excursions are non‐linear. These findings question the conventional wisdom about the importance of leadership in sustaining organizational transformation. Most notably, it was found that most of the archetypal change occurred after the initiating change agent (a new CEO) had left the firm and been replaced by the previous CEO who did not support the proposed changes.

The paper offers the first longitudinal study to examine the issue of substitutes for strategic leadership. In addition to two new substitutes that should be considered at this level of analysis – information systems and interpretive schemes – the data also point to the impact of collective action by mid‐level supervisors and employees.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of knowledge-centric innovative enterprises that function in a disaggregated and dispersed form and further contemplate the economic and managerial rationale behind this strategy. A constant challenge to large organizations as well as those pursuing the intent to grow bigger is how to sustain the innovative dynamism.

The authors review the evolution of disaggregated and dispersed enterprises and discuss the changing cost structures for transactions, integration and coordination in the global knowledge economy. They elaborate the benefits of scale reduction and dispersed operations with examples.

Their review of the extant practices suggests that managers are finding value in disaggregating the firm operations. Disaggregation enhances the firm agility and responsiveness and helps the firm exploit the fleeting opportunities without incurring the opportunity cost or risking high investment.

Corporations need to become nimble, and their structure should be networked and permeable with significant industry actors. Integration would be imprudent if there is huge sunk cost due to uncertainty in business. Scale reduction and disaggregation, and operating in a dispersed mode – like a shoaling form – would help the companies exploit the fleeting opportunities without incurring the opportunity cost and risking high investment.

In addition to reviewing the rise of disaggregated enterprises, we explore the economic and managerial rationale of the disaggregation strategy, and discuss the learning and innovation, investment and cost-related advantages that stem from the disaggregated form of organization.