Why Playing with the Dolphins Beats Swimming with the Sharks

Abstract

Building on a metaphor first coined by Lynch and Kordis, outlines the roles enacted during organizational change. Overlays the roles of “shark”, “carp” and “dolphin” against a unique change model, the power of which resides in alignments between underlying responsiveness, organizational learning, and behavioural assumptions. The insights go a long way towards explaining the difficulties involved in building internal synergies and why, for example, TQM fails.

Citation

Burdett, J.O. (1993), "Why Playing with the Dolphins Beats Swimming with the Sharks", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 8 No. 5, pp. 14-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949310040588