INCREMENTAL AND REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIC CHANGE: AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF COMMON PREMISES
The International Journal of Organizational Analysis
ISSN: 1055-3185
Article publication date: 1 March 1993
Abstract
Two views of organizational change dominate the management literature. The incremental view holds that organizations experience large‐scale strategic changes quite slowly while the revolutionary view proposes that organizations experience long periods of relatively little strategic variation punctuated by short, intense periods of major change. Commonalties among the two change theories provide the basis for a study of 101 businesses over a six year period. The research examines two theoretical implications: change is bimodally and discretely distributed and skewed toward incremental strategic change, and firms undergoing revolutionary strategic change will be more likely to experience simultaneous changes on multiple organizational dimensions than firms undergoing incremental strategic change. Consistent with Proposition 1, it was found that change is skewed toward incremental, but also that change is unimodal and continuously distributed, contrary to Proposition 1. Contrary to Proposition 2, revolutionary change on multiple dimensions was found to be rare.
Citation
Fornaciari, C.J., Lamont, B.T., Mason, B. and Hoffman, J.J. (1993), "INCREMENTAL AND REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIC CHANGE: AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF COMMON PREMISES", The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 273-290. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb028792
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 1993, MCB UP Limited