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This paper traces the emergence of a social movement that has attempted to transform the fundamental character of organizations in Australia. Unlike many other such social movements, this worldwide social movement has been largely unresearched and even unnamed. We refer to it as the organizational renewal movement. The story we tell here demonstrates how this new social movement gained momentum and influence and eventually contributed to today’s prevailing management orthodoxy. We present the case that change initiatives moved from being heresies to orthodoxies. In particular we trace the movement through three phases. The first phase traces the foundations and acceptance of humanistic change interventions. The second phase traces the challenges to the humanistic agenda and the emergence of new directions. The third phase demonstrates the process of strategic alignment, where heresies became accepted as orthodoxies. The paper concludes with some observations on future directions for the movement.

A key factor in business success in developed economies is the quality of those who work for the organization. The ability of an organization to attract and retain the best professional talent depends increasingly on its record in sustainability, including creating a constructive culture underpinned by effective leading-edge human resource strategies that increase the skills portfolios and career prospects of those who work there.

A recent experience illustrates the following. I was dining with a friend, a specialist in Human Resource Management. She had just taken a call from her niece, Jodie, a 30-year-old with a well-paid finance job in a large corporation. Jodie called to let her aunt know that she had turned down the outstanding job offer she received from another organization than the one she worked for – an offer she had previously discussed with her aunt.

“What made you decide to turn down such an excellent offer?” my friend asked her niece. Her reply was: “I went on to their website and checked out the number of women in senior management positions – that didn't look very good. Then I checked out their latest sustainability report; that was wishy-washy. I located informal contacts in the company who confirmed that the company was not playing a leading role in gender equity or sustainability so I decided to stay where I am. When I told my boss, he quickly organized a meeting to review my career path and I received a salary raise. However even so I won't be as well off financially right now but I would rather be with a company that is on the leading edge in these areas.”

This chapter explores how, in a variety of ways such as this, the drive to create a more sustainable society increasingly defines business opportunity and performance. For many of the world's leading corporations, sustainability is now simply part of their mainstream business. But first, to understand how business opportunity is changing, we examine key factors that are reshaping the future, including business itself.

Myths in organisations are often portrayed as evolving gradually, and perhaps decaying even more slowly, whether the myth seeks to establish internal standards or to provide cause and effect in a turbulent environment. A detailed case study of the start‐up phase in a graduate management school is analysed, together with a dynamic model of organisation operation and adjustment recently developed in the field of corporate strategy.

There has been a dramatic increase in interest in the learning organization. However there is confusion, among writers on the subject, about what a learning organization is and about how organizational learning occurs. Critiques some of the best known contributions to the field and argues that they are reductionist and do not indicate how organizational learning relates to business performance and strategic realignment.

To the front‐line soldier, war is far from being the kind of experience described by military historians and analysed by the strategists and generals. From the memoirs of those soldiers fortunate enough to have survived the battles which they fought usually emerges a picture of incomprehensible marches and movement, fragmented, intense action, and unconnected but significant details. There is no sense of the purposeful moves and counter‐moves, and unified patterns of action, seen by the historian or the general. While the analytical, “bird's‐eye” perspective may appear to make more sense of the events, it does so only at the cost of over‐simplification and loss of authenticity. A full account of a battle ought really to reflect the different “realities” perceived by the various observers and participants, but very few military historians have been able to do this. A notable exception is John Keegan, in The Face of Battle, who succeeds in conveying an impression of the individual soldier's perception of a battle, as well as giving the broader, analytical picture.

In this, the second part of a two‐part paper (Part I, Personnel Review, Summer 1977, pp 21–34) a survey of instances of work system design (WSD) experiments will be continued. As described in the Introduction to Part I, cases chosen for inclusion report the economic and human results of actual physical or structural innovations in a set or series of human tasks which, taken together, form some meaningful technical whole. The term ‘experiment’ is used in both Part I and II to refer loosely to change or manipulation of actual work activities, and not necessarily to well controlled laboratory experiments. In fact, most cases reported here are ‘natural’ and very few are carefully controlled.