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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.

Looks at the reasons for the collapse of both regimes and considers the importance of repression with these developments. Contrasts the methods of Imperial Russia with the Bolsheviks looking at Court proceedings, prison conditions, education and propaganda in prison, exile and the secret police. Concludes that whilst social support is usually seen as essential for survival of a system, repression is not regarded as a positive element but can become the method for a system’s survival and stability.

Given the multiplying and intensifying global systemic crises (ecological, financial, etc.), the question of revolution resurfaces. The paper addresses a crucial dimension of this question: the issue of revolutionary leadership. Two exemplary leaders are analysed: Jesus of Nazareth and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. The key purpose of the analysis is to show how these ‘pure-hearted’ leaders were ‘paradoxically’ willing to employ ‘dirty hands’, which in this context denotes revolutionary violence. Consequently, while peaceful approaches to structural transformation are obviously preferable, revolutionary violence should remain an ethical option.

Key findings advanced by the article include: (i) confirmation of the reasonableness of remaining actively open to the option of an ethical revolutionary violence; (ii) recognition that revolutionary love involves a dimension of hate; and (iii) confirmation that Jesus was a political revolutionary.

The paper is innovative and valuable in several respects: (i) it dares to broach the question of revolution; (ii) it shows how ‘the ethical’ may be inclusive of ethical violence; (iii) it challenges mainstream perceptions of Jesus as strictly a religious/apolitical figure, recalling and foregrounding his radical political dimension.

The punctuated equilibrium model (PEM) is an influential model of organizational change that can both advance theory and guide managerial action. However, with the exception of Romanelli and Tushman’s (1994) study of minicomputer firms, the core assertion of the PEM – that fundamental organizational change would occur through brief, discontinuous, and simultaneous changes in all domains of organizational activity and not through incremental and asynchronous changes – has not been tested in longitudinal, large-sample research. We examined the event histories of 50 bank holding companies in the U.S. between 1975 and 1995, replicating Romanelli and Tushman’s test of the PEM in a less turbulent industry environment. Additionally, we examined the consequences of organizational transformation on subsequent firm performance, an aspect of the PEM that has seldom been studied. We found that both revolutionary and non-revolutionary change patterns were common means to accomplish organizational transformation. We also found that the installation of a new top executive not previously affiliated with the company and major shifts in the regulatory environment increased the likelihood of revolutionary transformation. Whereas severe performance declines before transformation decreased the likelihood of organizational transformation, the occurrence of revolutionary transformation did not significantly influence subsequent organizational performance.

Discusses the use of the act frequency approach methodology to develop and validate a measure of organizational support of revolutionary change. A total of nine unique behaviors, describing three constructs, were viewed by employees as supportive of revolutionary change; and 12 unique behaviors, describing two constructs, were perceived as being non‐supportive of revolutionary change. The measures developed were found to have high internal reliability. The measures were also found to be highly correlated with relevant individual and organizational outcome measures. These results provide empirical support for the idea that how an organization supports revolutionary change can have an impact on both the organization and its employees and that contextual variable may not influence perceptions.

The current obsession with globalization and technological change has given rise to a new school of management, the revolutionary school. This school uses language appropriated from the political concept of revolution and argues that the key role of management is the transformation of their organizations. The article considers the extent to which the European business environment has been transformed and the extent to which transformation is possible under difficult market conditions such as those faced by the European car industry. The article concludes that under the structural conditions of saturation and slow or cyclical growth, organizational transformation is unlikely to be successful.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the French Revolution in Russian intellectual life. One could even make the claim that the French Revolution has had a more significant impact on modern Russian history than it has had upon modern French history! Indeed, since the end of the nineteenth century, the French Revolution has become passe in France in the sense that no Frenchman has looked at it as a blueprint for current political development. While there have been cases in which some of the old revolutionary images were invoked to bolster support for certain political activities (such as support for the war against Germany), it has never been wholeheartedly re‐embraced and there has been a sense of detachment about the revolution, a sense that modern conditions were somehow different.

The purpose of this chapter is to study the correlation of evolutional and revolutionary transformations in a socio-economic system in the conditions of the formation of an information economy by taking the example of modern Russia.

To distinguish these transformations by studying the information economy, based on the materials of reports and recommendations of the OECD and the World Bank, the indicators that show macro-economic transformations in a socio-economic system in the conditions of formation of an information economy and their control values that correspond to evolutional and revolutionary changes were determined. During the research, the authors used the method of comparative analysis for comparing the values of the indicators in modern Russia with the control values of the indicators that show macro-economic transformations in the socio-economic system in the conditions of the formation of an information economy and classify the corresponding transformations as evolutional and revolutionary. The information and analytical basis includes the materials of the reports of the Higher School of Economics, the OECD, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, the World Wide Web Foundation, the Digital single market, the INSEAD, the WIPO, and the Cornell University.

As a result, it is concluded that the planned transformations in a socio-economic system in the conditions of formation of information economy by implementating the optimization model of this process have an evolutional characteristic. Herein, certain transformations have a revolutionary nature.

The authors determine that the largest revolutionary transformations are due for 2022–2025. However, their classification is caused not by high rate of growth of the indicators’ values but by their achievement of control values. Therefore, the largest socio-economic shifts in the economic system in the modern Russia due to the formation of an information economy will take place in 2019–2022. Hence, in this period, an anti-crisis management of this process should be conducted.