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Transitions – including mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, and restructurings – are used by organizational leaders to accelerate the achievement of strategic objectives. However, the manner in which most transitions are implemented runs counter to research findings on the process of effective change management and, in particular, disregards the natural process of human adaptation. As a result, mismanaged transitions tend to have negative consequences for organizations and their members. Ironically, the characteristic of transitions that prompts individual and organizational strife – the capacity to disrupt the status quo – also enables an opportunity for individual and organizational renewal. For that to occur, however, members must make progress through the natural process of adaptation. This paper aims to propose a framework for facilitating adaptation to organizational transition, to both overcome the undesirable consequences of transitions and to accelerate achievement of the transition's strategic objectives.

This is a conceptual paper based on a review of the literatures on adaptation and transition and the author's own experience as a researcher or consultant in over 100 major organizational transitions.

The framework presented here should contribute to both the practice of organizational change management and empirical studies of interventions to facilitate individual adaptation to major organizational transitions.

The framework introduced in this paper should have a direct and substantial impact on transition management, employee well being and organizational effectiveness. It should minimize the negative consequences of transitions and accelerate the process of adaptation to organizational transition.

Investigates why some companies make a successful transition from ISO 9000 to TQM while others experience difficulty or failure. Identifies factors influencing a successful transition and their significance in the context of organisational learning. Methodologies employed include literature reviews, analysis of secondary data, interviews, and case studies. Key transition factors emerging from the literature include executive mindset, comprising understanding and motivation. These were incorporated into an assessment framework, the Quality Transition Framework, based on the Pyramid of Organizational Development. Empirical research revealed additional factors as being significant. These expanded executive mindset to incorporate intent; in addition, a capacity and willingness to learn, and visionary or transformational leadership appeared to be of particular importance. Research conducted to date suggests it may have greater value as an explanatory model, but further empirical testing is required. Compares the proposed Model of Quality Transition with Kanji’s Process Innovation Framework. Proposes that another area of investigation is the possible synthesis of the two models.

Career theorists have been increasingly occupied with role transitions across organisations, neglecting role transitions undertaken within single organisations. By exploring in depth the aspects of career capital that role holders need to facilitate their own organisational role transition, this article builds upon career capital theory.

Adopting an interpretivist approach, this study explores the experiences of 36 business leaders who have undertaken a recent role transition within a UK construction business.

The article empirically characterises 24 career capital aspects, clustered into Knowing Self, Knowing How and Knowing Whom. It argues that these aspects are important to internal role transitions and compares them to mainstream career capital theory. In addition, the concepts of connecting, crossing and investing career capital are introduced to explain how career capital supports such transitions.

This study proposes a new career capital framework and refocuses debate on organisational careers. It is based on a single organisation, and it would be beneficial for future researchers to explore its applicability within other organisations.

The article explores the implications of the new career capital framework for business leaders and organisational managers who wish to build individual and organisational career mobility.

This study proposes a new, empirically grounded, career capital theoretical framework particularly attending to organisational role transitions.

The processes of management development within a change management context have mostly been informed by models which assume that individuals can be developed by planned and purposive intervention to perform effectively within a new, forecast, but essentially stable environment. Alongside such shifts at individual and organisational level, the last decade has seen revolutionary change in national economies as the former state socialist countries transform themselves to participate in the global market economy. This paper, based on an in‐depth analysis of interviews with 73 chief executives and senior managers of 61 key companies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), identifies a model of the individual transition process of managers during the process of state transformation. From this the authors draw lessons for the practice of management development under conditions of transformative change.

Within accounts of and frameworks for organisational leadership, especially in the public sector, there is continuing enthusiasm for the distinction between transformational and transactional models, where the latter is typically compared unfavourably with the former. This paper reports on a review of the literature on organisation transition (that is mergers and acquisitions), which found this distinction helpful in ordering the material considered. Unexpectedly, the review found that more of the advice contained within the papers examined focused on interventions that could be broadly categorised as transactional rather than transformational. This seems an important finding in a context where the distinction continues to have salience and when transformational characteristics are often seen as being essential to leadership and transactional attributes are perceived as merely being suggestive of management.

Organizational change (OC) triggers uncertainty and ambiguity, which have side effects for individual and groups. Even though scholars and practitioners have generally conceived OC as a remedy for workplace discrimination (WD), it may determine opportunistic behaviors, which increase the risks of discrimination at work. The article discusses the direct and indirect effects of OC on WD, investigating the moderating role of organizational meaningfulness (OM) and employees' involvement (EI).

Secondary data were collected from the Eurofound's European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). The sample included 33,024 European employees. A double moderation analysis based on the bootstrapping method was designed to collect evidence on the direct effects of OC on WD and on the indirect effects moderated by OM and EI.

OC was found to generate greater discrimination at work. People who were not informed about change and those who were not allowed to express their opinion about change were more likely to report discrimination. OM and EI performed as significant moderators of the side effects of OC on WD.

Restructurings and reorganizations are tricky processes. The uncertainty and ambiguity produced by OC might negatively affect interpersonal relationships at work and organizational practices, paving the way for overt and/or explicit discrimination. The construction of clear and shared senses around change is crucial to curb the drawbacks of organizational transitions on workplace discrimination. EI is essential to improve organizational sensemaking of change processes and to establish a positive organizational climate, which prevent the occurrence of WD.

Literature has overlooked the negative implications of OC on WD. The study findings emphasize that organizational transitions may trigger discrimination, creating greater uncertainty and ambiguity in the workplace. OM and EI allow overcoming ambiguity and increase the employees' ability to deal with uncertainty, addressing the side effects of OC on WD.

This paper outlines some strategic considerations in the transition of an organization from essentially a research and development or design environment to an operational or production environment. We propose a transition life cycle model that is in agreement with the existing life cycle models. The building blocks of the research are the results of an extensive literature search and a series of industrial interviews. The desired expectation of this effort was to find methods for moving NASA’s space shuttle program into an era of routine, timely operations. Proposes utilizing some existing concepts of change for achieving a smooth transformation under various levels of technical, political, cultural, managerial and economic uncertainties. Recommends an initial planning stage followed by various possible courses of actions and considerations for the transition. We hope that the framework presented in this paper will serve the individuals and organizations considering a major transition, especially those from a research and development to an operational one.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the barriers and facilitators to an effective transition from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS). It also presents a new entry into considering how the transition can be improved.

Insights into the transition from CAMHS to AMHS were gathered through eight semi-structured interviews with mental health professionals. Two methods of data analysis were employed to explore the emerging themes in the data and the observed deficit approach to organisational development.

The findings identified a vast volume of barriers in comparison to facilitators to the transition. Adolescents who transition from CAMHS to AMHS initially experience difficulty adapting to the differences in the services due to the short duration of the transition period. However, despite the established barriers to the transition, adolescents tend to adapt to the differences between the services. Findings also showed a negative framing towards the transition amongst the mental health professionals which resembles a deficit approach to organisational development.

This paper explores mental health professionals’ perspectives regarding the transition in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The transition is increasingly recognised as an area in health care that requires improvement. This research provides a new way to consider the transition by exploring the perceived deficit approach to organisational development in the services.

The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative communications model and relate information to succession planning for organizations facing imminent change.

Using a review of existent literature, this work examines and expounds upon the impact of planning effectively for transitions between entities.

The paper presents a collaborative communications model for a manager that is based on four tenets – condition setting, planning, execution, and process evaluation. Within each of these tenets are elements of communication, mentorship, leader development, and acceptance (trust) among stakeholders to ensure two entities transition appropriately.

Key tenets of leadership are often missed when developing strategies for organizational transition. This work examines how communicating collaboratively is linked to succession management and can aid managers in understanding some implications of ill‐developed planning efforts.

In an applied sense, this model provides health care managers with concepts related to effective change at both the individual and organizational levels. While this work is directed toward managing transition among health care organizations and personnel, the information is equally applicable to a broader audience.

While there is a dearth of literature examining succession management in a variety of industries, little information is directed specifically toward health care leadership. This paper provides concepts related to effective risk mitigation in succession management.

The multidisciplinary research on the phenomena of voluntary career transition (VCT) and voluntary turnover (VTO) remains disparate. This integrative review examines literatures in these two areas in relation to research in the Chinese context. The purpose of this paper is to identify future research directions for Chinese indigenous research in this area.

This review adopted an integrative literature review approach.

The authors found that research on VCT and VTO in different disciplines has shared identical or similar constructs and produced complementary empirical findings. This suggests that combining the disparate research in VCT and VTO in the Western literature to address the large‐scale career phenomenon in China may produce unexpected research outcomes, particularly when integrating the research with Chinese‐specific contexts in socioeconomic, cultural, and organization dynamics.

Taking advantage of, and linking existing literature in, VCT and VTO while considering the Chinese context may generate new knowledge to understand the massive career phenomenon in China. The authors offer a number of specific research questions based on the review and analysis of the literatures.

This paper offers insights for organizations to develop strategies and policies in balancing talent management and employees career concerns.

The paper is the first in the literature proposing an integrated research strategy on VCT and VTO to study the same phenomenon in organizations, particularly in the Chinese context.