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This study explores the positive and negative factors influencing transformational learning experiences of female leaders in women’s leadership development programmes in sports and examines the differences in learning/change factors cited by those who successfully addressed them and those who failed.

The study adopted a qualitative research method, using phone interviews with women leaders in a sports setting.

The findings revealed that participants presented clear progress in terms of leadership skills, but they failed to report whether this progress can be achieved if the programme is running within a specific sports organisation, targeting a specific kind of sports leadership in the long term.

There were a number of limitations for this study, e.g. selection of participants, sample size, exploratory methodology, which affected generalising the findings to other sports organisations or other countries.

The study provides a starting point for the exploration of the effectiveness of women leadership development programmes and how designers can evaluate the outcome of such initiatives in the UK.

Headquarters managers of a medium‐sized manufacturing company initiated a culture change in five of their dispersed wholesale units. The aim was for more external service quality. This paper aims to report the results of a test of three hypotheses, shedding light on the behavior of the involved agents. The hypotheses are rooted in the change management literature.

The present study rests both on quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interviews) field data collected in two discrete phases over 3.5 years and obtained from the operational employees. The authors use their quantitative survey data to examine agentic explanations for the failed change; their qualitative data corroborated the findings.

No culture change or service improvement was detected. Despite the fact that local change agents were not the initiators or owners of the intended change, employee satisfaction with the local change agents (situated in the service units) was found to explain variance in the culture and climate scores. The results underscore, furthermore, the critical importance of training employees, or lack thereof, in instituting the required new behavior.

Most change‐management research collects data from the managers' point of view. There are relatively few studies like this one that have been conducted from the perspective of those employees working in frontline service units. Meeting the challenge to improve external and internal service through culture change is crucial in many firms, for their survival and growth; accomplishing such organisational change (in which both culture and climate are positively affected) does indeed require experienced change‐management skills. Results of this study recommend the honing of the change‐management skill “coaching” for experienced managers, even though they themselves may not feel such a need.

Organizational change is a key mechanism to ensure the sustainability of healthcare systems. However, healthcare organizations are persistently difficult to change, and literature is riddled with examples of failed change endeavors. In this chapter, we attempt to unravel the underlying causes for failed organizational change. We distinguish three types of change with different levels of depth that require different change approaches. Transformations are the deepest forms of change where beliefs and principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Renewals are deep forms of change where principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Improvements are shallow forms of change where only modifications at the level of routines are needed. Using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as our metaphor, we propose a theory of “organizational DNA” to understand organizations and these three types of organizational changes. We posit that organizations are made up of a double helix consisting of a so-called “social string,” which contains the “soft” interaction or communication among the organization's members, and a so-called “technical string,” which contains “hard” organizational aspects such as structure and technology. Ladders of organizational nucleotides (i.e., Routines, Principles, and Beliefs) connect this double helix in various combinations. Together, the double helix and accompanying nucleotides make up the DNA of an organization. Without knowledge of the architecture of organizational DNA and whether a change addresses beliefs, principles, and/or routines, we believe that organizational change is constrained and based on luck rather than change management expertise. Following this metaphor, we show that organizational change fails when it attempts to change one part of the DNA (e.g., routines) in a way that renders it incompatible with the connecting components (e.g., principles and beliefs). We discuss how the theory can be applied in practice using an exemplar case.

This chapter examines organizational and instructional responses of California's high schools to the introduction of a High School Exit Examination through interviews with 47 high school principals across the state. I found that most schools changed little about their organizational structure, and provided little support for students until after they failed the exam. Findings also indicate that the exit exam influenced the curriculum most significantly in low-performing schools and in low-track classes within higher performing schools. While the exit exam spurred some positive changes, it also led to unintended consequences inside classrooms.

Management attempts to transform organizations seldom succeed. This paper aims to describe seven common communication behaviors accompanying those failures.

This paper integrates material from three recent communication and organizational change studies, recent change theory, and complexity theory to model communication and change processes. All the studies employed traditional ethnographic methods, but one study employed quantitative methods as well as part of a mixed methods design.

Data describe six common communication behaviors during failed organizational change efforts. The combination of these behaviors suggests a seventh pattern. Communication during failed efforts seldom involves enough communication opportunities, lacks any sense of emerging identification, engenders distrust, and lacks productive humor. These problems are compounded by conflict avoidance and a lack of interpersonal communication skills. Members decouple the system, sheltering the existing culture until it is safe for it to reemerge later.

The integration of data from three studies with theory improves transferability, but more studies would improve the veracity of the results. Only one study employed quantitative data along with qualitative data. Organizational change research may need to employ mixed methods and augment results through simulations to understand time‐dependent processes.

Results point to the limitations of management and impersonal communication. Change is a messy business, and transformational change will not happen unless management is willing to tolerate the ambiguity and the sense that emerges in communication. Results also point to the importance of communication skills in hiring practices.

Few essays integrate results from several studies. This paper challenges accepted management practices and extends the growing understanding of the limits of individuals to control social change; it also adds to the literature on and application of complexity theory.

Focuses on the reasons why the majority of improvement programs stall and fail.

Explains that many improvement programs could have been shown, before they were launched, to have a low probability of success, while others stall because of people's reactions to problems after the program has been launched. Describes six practical things that organizational leaders can do to reduce the risk of their improvement programs going wrong.

Highlights the importance of: setting high standards; leading by example; giving the right managers the power to implement the change; focusing on the results rather than the process; changing quickly; and choosing to begin with the areas that matter and teams who want to participate.

Urges the importance of being clear about what the objectives of change are, why they need to be achieved and by when.

Reveals ways in which, through improving the performance of individual organizations, it may be possible to improve the functioning of society as a whole.

Shows that many of the issues that ultimately lead to the failure of organizational change can be predicted and even planned for.

Defines and evaluates transformation, and examines why transformation efforts can fail. Provides a case study, describing the context, strategy and change processes. Finally, identifies what lessons can be learned from working with failure.

Our world abounds with constant, relentless change to the extent that most people no longer have an open mind about it. Unequivocally, they want it to stop. Many organizations have initiated change programs which have failed. Often, such failures are blamed on staff or on external constraints, such as cost, workload, and legislation. In this study, more than 500 responses were obtained from participants who completed the statement: “The three biggest obstacles to bringing about effective change in my organization are…” A total of 89 per cent of these responses pointed to factors within the organization itself.

Purpose: The emotions that accompany failure, in and of organizations, and their consequences have been researched in multiple domains of management, but comparative approaches have seldom been attempted. The failure of organizations to survive has been a common occurrence over centuries, particularly in the modern era of start-ups, innovation, and political, economic, and environmental turbulence. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, failure at many levels of society, including the organizational and individual, has increased significantly and produced even more intense emotions. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: For this conceptual chapter, literature from many disciplines was consulted on failure in organizations, and the emotions it elicit, including studies on the process of failure as well as its outcomes. Findings: Failing and failure are likely to evoke negative emotions, with negative consequences for the actor. However, positive emotions can also occur, and a matrix of emotional valence and consequences presents an intriguing set of possibilities. The dimensions of emotions (valence, intensity, duration, and frequency) interact with a wide range of contributing factors (salience, personality, identity, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, prior experience of failure, and context) in producing the emotions of failure and their consequences. Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the literature by explicating the types of emotions that emanate during and after failure across many domains of management research, their dimensions and contributing factors, and the consequences for the individual actor. The model of the emotions of failure that is presented here assembles a wider variety of elements than prior research has offered. We indicate avenues for further research as we approach an era of even more demanding challenges.

The lived paid work experiences of two women (a European Canadian-born and a South Asian immigrant) demonstrate how low-quality leader–member exchanges and poor diversity management negatively influence employees' health, job satisfaction and retention during a period of major organizational change.

This paper combined a narrative case study with auto ethnography to examine the lived paid work experiences of the two female authors and identify common patterns of meaning within the data.

The analysis of personalized accounts demonstrate the damaging results of a failed change management initiative when leaders did not follow an organizational change model and used an authoritarian leadership style. Further, the low-quality leader–member exchanges and poor diversity management reduced authors' feelings of inclusion and negatively impacted their emotional and physical health, job satisfaction, and retention.

New knowledge gained about leader–member exchange and diversity management has implications not only for leaders, but also human service managers. The data represents the authors' two perspectives, constraining generalizability. Larger samples of employees' narratives from diverse cultural/work backgrounds would be valuable to inform organizational change.

The paper provides practical reasons for leadership training and skill development in change management models.

Given global demographic diversity, the findings are relevant to organizations, highlighting the importance of creating a climate of inclusion for workers' job satisfaction and retention and organizational success.

While the sample size (n = 2) is very small, using a combination of personal experience methods offered insights into the complexity of leader–member exchange and diversity management from workers' perspectives, and went beyond successful cases, adding value to organizational change research.