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This paper proposes that organizations have a characteristic level of change describing the amount and tempo of change an organization typically exhibits. The level of change is held in place by a combination of individual, leadership, and organizational factors. It becomes part of the organizational context and is difficult to modify. The paper explores some key determinants and consequences of a characteristic level of change, including the limitations it creates for taking strategic action.

Volume 19 of Research in Organizational Change and Development includes chapters by an international diverse set of authors including Michael Beer, Victor J. Friedman, Luis Felipe Gómez and Dawna I. Ballard, Ethan S. Bernstein and Frank J. Barrett, Karen J. Jansen and David A. Hofmann, Guido Maes and Geert Van Hootegem, Tobias Fredberg, Flemming Norrgren and Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, and William A. Pasmore. The ideas expressed by these authors are as diverse as their backgrounds.

In a series of studies, we develop and validate an approach to studying momentum fluctuations over the course of organizational change to better understand the dynamics of change processes. The first study experimentally examines momentum fluctuations in a controlled change context and explores individual predictors of variance in momentum. The second study utilizes a real organizational setting, examining organizationally relevant predictors of momentum variance and the ability of momentum trends to predict meaningful organizational outcomes. Combined results provide evidence that momentum mapping is a valid approach for researchers and managers exploring processes that unfold over time.

The web is now a significant component of the recruitment and job search process. However, very little is known about how companies and job seekers use the web, and the ultimate effectiveness of this process. The specific research questions guiding this study are: how do people search for job‐related information on the web? How effective are these searches? And how likely are job seekers to find an appropriate job posting or application?

The data used to examine these questions come from job seekers submitting job‐related queries to a major web search engine at three points in time over a five‐year period.

Results indicate that individuals seeking job information generally submit only one query with several terms and over 45 percent of job‐seeking queries contain a specific location reference. Of the documents retrieved, findings suggest that only 52 percent are relevant and only 40 percent of job‐specific searches retrieve job postings.

This study provides an important contribution to web research and online recruiting literature. The data come from actual web searches, providing a realistic glimpse into how job seekers are actually using the web.

The results of this research can assist organizations in seeking to use the web as part of their recruiting efforts, in designing corporate recruiting web sites, and in developing web systems to support job seeking and recruiting.

This research is one of the first studies to investigate job searching on the web using longitudinal real world data.

Dawna I. Ballard (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2002) is associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines organizational temporality, with particular attention to ways in which time shapes and is shaped by a range of communication processes. Her published research appears in outlets such as Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Small Group Research, Management Communication Quarterly, as well as several interdisciplinary edited volumes, including Time and Memory, Workplace Temporalities, and Time in Organizational Research.

Treating team members fairly, valuing different voices, and celebrating uniqueness are the behaviors that successful inclusive leaders exhibit and role models within the workplace. Actions such as these can impact how engaged (the active and intentional use of physical, cognitive, and emotional energies put into job responsibilities) employees are in their relationships with colleagues and how they feel about their work. Research revealed that when leaders act in ways that demonstrate inclusivity (such as treating others fairly, being open to differences, valuing unique perspectives, and authenticity), women, people of color, and those individuals at small or midsized companies feel stronger connections with their colleagues. This is valuable as engaged employees positively affect the organization’s success. We know that perceived or actual commonalities can cause individuals to feel a sense of connection to others based solely on that perception, so it should only follow that the level of engagement should be impacted when team members and managers feel a sense of connection based upon actual or perceived identity similarities. This provides a unique opportunity for leaders to create spaces of bravery and safety through inclusive leadership actions that allow all individuals to share the aspects of their identity that allow these connections to occur. This chapter identifies behaviors and actions of inclusive leaders, explores original research on the connection between perceptions of identity and employee engagement, and provides practical advice on how leaders can support and encourage employee engagement regardless of the perception of identity.

Policy-capturing is an experimental technique potentially capable of providing powerful insights into the cognitive bases of work-related decision processes by revealing actors’ “implicit” models of the problem at hand, thereby opening up the “black box” of managerial and organizational cognition. This chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of policy-capturing vis-à-vis alternative approaches that seek to capture, in varying ways, the inner workings of people’s minds as they make decisions. It then outlines the critical issues that need to be addressed when designing policy-capturing studies and offers practical advice to would-be users concerning some of the common pitfalls of the technique and ways of avoiding them.