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  • 2015
  • Chapter
  • Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective

Leading Proactive Punctuated Change

By: Michael Tushman, Charles O'Reilly and Bruce Harreld
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Abstract

This chapter focuses on leading proactive punctuated change. Based on the institutional and organizational change literatures and our extended involvement with IBM between 1999 and 2008, we suggest that proactive punctuated change can be effectively managed through an engineered social process designed and led by the senior leadership team. Where reactive punctuated change is driven by crisis conditions, the motivation and energy required to lead proactive punctuated change is rooted in an overarching aspiration coupled with a contradictory strategic challenge. The challenge to simultaneously explore and exploit provides the logic, tension, and requirement for experimentation that helps an extended management community collectively learn how to execute strategic organizational renewal. This change process involves disciplined conversations, actions, and associated learning by the senior team, diffusing these learning capabilities to the extended senior leadership team and, over time, to the larger leadership community. We connect principles for leading proactive punctuated change to organizational change dilemmas associated with sustainability.

Citation

Tushman, Michael, Charles O'Reilly, and Bruce Harreld. "Leading Proactive Punctuated Change." Chap. 10 in Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective, edited by Rebecca Henderson, Ranjay Gulati, and Michael Tushman. Oxford University Press, 2015.

About The Author

Michael L. Tushman

Organizational Behavior
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game By: Andrew Binns, Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman
  • Leading Disruption in a Legacy Business: A Compelling Growth Ambition Is a Critical Enabler for New Ventures By: Andy Binns, Michael Tushman and Charles O'Reilly
  • The Translucent Hand of Managed Ecosystems: Engaging Communities for Value Creation and Capture By: Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle and Michael Tushman
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