Eric B. Dent

Challenging “Resistance to Change”

This article examines the origins of one of the most widely accepted mental models that drives organizational behavior: the idea that there is resistance to change and that managers must overcome it. This mental model, held by employees at all levels, interferes with successful change implementation. The authors trace the emergence of the term resistance to change and show how it became received truth. Kurt Lewin introduced the term as a systems concept, as a force affecting managers and employees equally. Because the terminology, but not the context, was carried forward, later uses increasingly cast the problem as a psychological concept, personalizing the issue as employees versus managers. Acceptance of this model confuses an understanding of change dynamics. Letting go of the term—and the model it has come to embody—will make way for more useful models of change dynamics. The authors conclude with a discussion of alternatives to resistance to change.

Seinfeld, Professor of Organizational Behavior: The Psychological Contract and Systems Thinking

The television sitcom Seinfeld provides management educators with a fun and thorough tool for teaching two concepts that are often part of organizational behavior or general management courses: the concepts of the psychological contract and interdependence in systems thinking. Especially in the case of the latter concept, students have a difficult time comprehending the central ideas through typical classroom learning. Viewing several episodes of Seinfeld seems to greatly clarify the concepts and sensitize students to seeing interdependencies in their own lives.

The role of luck in the strategy‐performance relationship

Purpose – Strategic management scholars seek to link strategic factors to performance. When specific causal links cannot be identified, however, other potential explanations should be considered, including the notion of luck. This paper aims to introduce a distinction between scholarly and practitioner perspectives of luck and identifies why this distinction is critical to both scholars and practitioners. Design/Methodology/Approach – This paper proposes a framework linking luck and competitive advantage. It also reports the results of an exploratory empirical investigation on the perceived role of luck in firm performance. Findings – Scholars and practitioners have different views of luck’s role in organizational performance. Managers are more likely to assign luck for bad outcomes rather than good. In addition, the more quantitative a manager’s work function, the less likely he or she is to perceive a luck-performance linkage, and the higher the manager is in the organization, the more likely he or she is to perceive luck as affecting outcomes. Research Limitations/Implications – There are a number of reasons why luck should receive prominence when considering the strategy-performance relationship: many of the linkages between strategic factors and performance are identified after the fact – they are viewed as causal when they were actually lucky; empirical research may identify relationships whether they actually exist; researchers tend to find what they are looking for; and academics will be more likely to explain “luck” if they are using the appropriate tools to reveal it. Practical Implications – The positive link between management level and luck’s role in performance identified in this study suggests that the more a manager knows about a firm’s resources and attributes, the more likely he or she is to downplay the role they actually play in performance. From this perspective, managers seem more willing to acknowledge the role played by luck as they progress into greater levels of responsibility and control. Originality/Value – A significant portion of empirical work seeks to explain differences in performance across organizations by identifying the links between various strategic factors and performance. Although this research has contributed much to the knowledge about the strategy-performance nexus, it assumes that strategy-performance linkages necessarily exist and that they can be readily identified. In other words, most scholarly work in this area is based on assumptions that minimize or preclude the role of luck or randomness in the determination of firm performance. Building on previous work, this paper adopts an alternative perspective on the strategy-performance relationship, highlighting the often overlooked role of luck.

CAS in War, Bureaucratic Machine in Peace: The US Air Force Example

The operational art of air power, as articulated by its earliest pioneers (Douhet, Mitchell, and Trenchard) as well as by recent air power theorists (Col. John Warden III, Lt. Col. Stephen McNamara, and others), has increasingly been seen as innately flexible, nonlinear, and adaptive. From the reconnaissance, air supremacy, and strategic bombardment lessons of the First and Second World Wars to recent experiences in the Gulf War and Operation Allied Force with stand-off precision engagement and parallel system-wide attacks on enemy leverage points, the US Air Force has learned to minimize force-on-force encounters by first removing an enemy’s ability to resist. In essence, the enemy and the Air Force are thought of as “complex adaptive systems.” Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are defined here as nonlinear systems made up of multiple interacting agents that are sufficiently different from each other that their behavior will not be exactly the same in all conditions (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998: 18).

Propensity for Participative Decision Making (PPDM) In Turkey and the USA

Increased subordinate participation in management decisions has been a recognised trend in both private and public organisations in many western nations. Less is known about such practices in other parts of the world, however, especially in emerging countries. This study assesses similarities and differences between US and Turkish managers with regard to propensity for participative decision making (PPDM). The first hypothesis tests the validity of the PPDM scale among a sample of Turkish managers, and was supported. The second hypothesis examines whether US managers report higher levels of participation with respect to the four dimensions of organisational effectiveness, power, culture, and commitment. Surprisingly, the Turkish managers reported higher levels of participation in the first three dimensions, with no statistical difference with the US managers on commitment. Other findings are discussed and directions for future research are also presented.

Commentary: Communicating Science The Difficulty Introduced by the Historical Politics of the English Language

Understanding scientific concepts does not come easily to Americans, who nevertheless enjoy tremendous benefits because of scientific progress. The average citizen has a need to know more about scientific concepts to participate in the ongoing dialogue about everything from the cloning of Dolly (the sheep), to the possible entitlement of prescription drug coverage for senior citizens, to the way the Internet is changing the American way of life. Language sets up our framework for understanding, and awareness of the politics embodied in the three origins of the English language is the key to explaining scientific concepts more clearly. Because of an ancient cultural struggle, English is unusual among Indo-European languages in its way of “knowing,” a core concept of science. To enter our minds, scientists must remember our hearts.

The Unique Governance Challenges of Graduate Contract-Cohort Programs

A growing trend in American higher education is for employers to contract with universities for a cohort of employees to complete a graduate management degree program. The experience at two universities with four different contract organizations over a 6-year period illustrates that this arrangement is ideal for the delivery of management education. At the same time, the contract organization becomes a stakeholder of the university department, which has implications that will be novel and unique compared with anything else the department has ever done. This article describes some of the governance challenges as universities and employers partner in a graduate management degree program. A number of issues are surfaced and described. The article concludes with suggestions for others who might initiate a contract-cohort program, and a discussion of some of the future research opportunities.

A tribute to the work of Jerry Harvey, an MSR pioneer

Dr. Jerry B. Harvey (1935–2015) taught a course, “The Ethical, Moral, and Spiritual Issues of Management” in the MBA program at The George Washington University possibly as early as the 1980s. In the 1970s, he published articles such as “Organization Development as a Religious Movement” (Harvey 1973). Before the MSR special interest group was established in the Academy of Management, Harvey was considering deeply the spiritual and religious aspects of managerial and organizational work. This special issue pays tribute to this pioneer in the field. After earning his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Texas, Jerry was employed by the National Training Laboratories for a few years where he learned at the feet of Chris Argyris, Warren Bennis, Dick Beckhard, Rensis Likert, Douglas MacGregor, Ron Lippitt, and other OB founders. He finished his career with more than 40 years of service on the faculty of The George Washington University School of Business. He is, perhaps, best known for identifying the “Abilene Paradox.” A movie by this title is CRM Learning’s all-time best-selling training video program and has been shown by countless classrooms and corporate settings throughout the world. Our field also recently lost Andre Delbecq, who had the demeanor of a wise, spiritual guru. Harvey was probably equally spiritual, but in many ways had a demeanor opposite of Andre’s. Jerry was irreverent. Although he had a strict Southern Baptist upbringing in which dancing was considered a sin, he used salty language and wrote about farting in church (“On Tooting Your Own Horn or Social Intervention as the Process of Releasing Flatus in the Confines of Religious Institutions,” 1999). In Harvey’s first two books he takes very seriously his daughter’s question, “What if God is a mouse?” As Peter Vaill describes him in “Let Us Now Praise JBH – the Down Home Scholar,” Jerry was an irritant. You simply cannot read William Spark’s My “F” in Life: A Tribute to Jerry B. Harvey and not cringe at some of Jerry’s behavior (the double negative is necessary here). I am pleased to have edited such a wonderful special issue that appropriately pays tribute to Jerry. Five papers, two from long-time colleagues and three from students of 20 years ago provide both common and unique perspectives about Jerry. The issue begins with the aforementioned “Let Us Now Praise JBH – the Down Home Scholar,” by Peter Vaill, which provides the perspective of a close colleague for nearly all of Jerry’s professional life. I love Vaill’s description of how what Jerry’s truth-telling did was to “take me into the dark room of my heart, or soul, or wherever it was, let me grope around the periphery of its flat, uninteresting walls until I snagged on something of myself that was interesting enough to develop.” Vaill’s reminder that Jerry would contend that golf and spirituality are the same is another important insight into Jerry’s life. My own contribution, “Jerry Harvey: The Quintessential Life of Sense and Nonsense,” attempts to introduce those in the MSR community unfamiliar with Jerry to his early work, and how he may have been the first business professor to teach a course in this field. I also attempt to capture both Jerry’s quirky and penetrating side and describe the permanent impact he has had on my life. William Sparks’ article provides a tremendous detailed example of how powerful (and scary?) an intimate interaction with Jerry was. As a colleague, Vaill is able to describe him as an irritant,

Jerry Harvey: the quintessential life of sense and nonsense*

Abstract The author pays homage to his former professor, the iconic, caring, profane, charming, and piercing Jerry B. Harvey. Harvey may have been the first person to teach a course on spirituality in a school of business. His work predated the establishment of the Management, Spirituality, and Religion interest group in the Academy of Management, dating at least to a talk about OD as a Religious Movement in 1964. The article is a critique of Harvey’s œuvre in terms of work that was ahead of its time, work that is timely for today, work that is timeless, and work that feels dated at this point of the twenty-first century. In the final section, the author describes how Harvey’s work impacted his career even several decades later.

The Leader-Follower Relationship and Follower Performance

The purpose of this study is to explore the evidence related to the influence of Leader–Follower dyadic relationship quality (DRQ) on follower task and contextual performance and to assess the role of moderating variables on this DRQ/performance relationship. Using an evidence-based approach to research, an extensive systematic literature review was performed using deliberate search terminology and inclusion/exclusion criteria. The abstracts for more than 300 studies were examined for pertinence, with 223 research studies satisfying the general inclusion criteria. The research ultimately comprised 179 studies with 278 findings of 91 of these studies included in the final evidence. Data was synthesized using framework synthesis, an inductive analysis of data and the identification of key themes which serve to comprise the conceptual model. The findings of this research suggest that DRQ relates to performance, with 80% of the findings supporting the DRQ/task performance relationship and 84% supporting the DRQ/contextual performance relationship. The research found that the DRQ/task performance relationship and DRQ/ contextual performance relationship were strengthened by moderating variables, though the types of variable for each relationship varied. The DRQ/task performance relationship was strengthened by work structure, team dynamics, and frequency of managerial communication, whereas the DRQ/contextual performance relationship was strengthened by organizational and cultural attributes.