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For 30 years the series, Research in Organizational Change and Development (ROCD) has provided an extensive range of scholarly research and philosophical reflections on the field of organization development and change (ODC). On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first volume, this chapter poses the question as to how we might learn about the philosophy of ODC research from the 24 published volumes. Taking the author’s explicit pursuit of the question as a process of interiority, it invites readers to engage with the question themselves and thereby enact interiority within ODC itself.

The large number of publications about sustainability and sustainable development that have been published during the past decade has dealt largely with the science of sustainability, the content of sustainability initiatives, and increasingly with the need to more closely link the economic, environmental, and social purposes and operating logic of the firm. Recent literature stresses the inherent social nature of the challenges to aggressively moving to more sustainable ways of operating for the well-being of our planet, society, economy, organizations, and humans. Despite rich case examples, guidance on how to organize to achieve the triple bottom line is limited. We take stock of the current state of knowledge, using an adaptive complex system perspective to articulate the challenges of organizing for sustainable effectiveness. Most of the global economy and the knowledge upon which it is predicated carry a logic of resource abundance even in the face of increasing competition for scarce resources, and a singular focus on economic outcomes. We argue that the development of new capabilities to address triple bottom line sustainability requires a change in that logic and requires new rules of interaction, new organizational and interorganizational designs, and new ways of learning. The premise is that systems can build on their inherent capabilities to learn and to act collectively in order to adapt. We argue that by working together to collaboratively explore how to organize for sustainability, academics and practitioners can accelerate knowledge generation and progress. This chapter provides the theoretical framing context for the chapters to come.

This chapter explores the evolution of a network, initially based on providing sustainable seafood through Loblaw’s supply chain, to a network that is collectively working to improve ocean health. It describes the role of the CEO and key managers, the internal changes taken by Loblaw to become a more sustainable organization, and the external partnering that resulted in a more coherent network with shared goals.

The chapter describes models and theories of sustainable organizations, issue nets, and collaboration and then applies the concepts to understand Loblaw’s sustainability journey and the creation of a network.

The model of the evolution to a sustainable organization is extended to include the journey to sustainable issue or domain networks. What Loblaw and the partnering organizations were able to create suggests that there are increasing levels of collaboration around changing a domain, if there is the courage to take a leap of faith and increase an organization’s time horizon beyond immediate financial demands.

The findings of this chapter will help senior executives with responsibility for shifting supply chains to become more sustainable. In addition, this case provides a new level of detail in describing the journey to sustainability, shifting from a company focus to an issue focus.

This chapter examines a case study of inter-institutional merger in higher education, and explores the complex challenges institutional leaders may face in pursuing a merger process within a university setting where centuries-old tradition frames the context within which new innovations occur. Using the conceptual lens of organizational ambidexterity, findings uncover seven distinct phases of this merger process and propose a pre-merger Affiliation period as a strategy for establishing trust and mutual respect, aligning institutional cultures, and achieving balance between innovation and preservation in order to achieve full merged status. The chapter concludes with implications for theory and opportunities for practice.

This chapter shares the findings of a research study that investigated how organizations managed critical incidents that had the potential for dramatic economic impact and why those organizations chose to pursue certain issues. The findings expose organization identity’s role in stabilizing organizations. Understanding this role creates an opportunity to improve organization change efforts by examining and understanding a subject’s organization identity. Armed with this understanding, a change agent may design interventions in such a way as to align with identity or, when necessary, to specifically alter identity.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

The chapters in this first volume of the book series “Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness” captured a rich set of cases in which sustainable effectiveness was the central focus. Each chapter illuminated the development of a distinct sustainable system, and had a special focus on reporting theoretically informed and rigorously explored knowledge to guide purposeful design and learning approaches. Collectively the chapters highlighted the processes, organization and design, system regulation, and continuous learning approaches in complex organizational and multiorganizational systems that enabled simultaneous focus on and advancing of economic, social, and ecological outcomes. In this concluding chapter, we capture, via a comparative investigation, some of the learning from the cases about the development of new capabilities, design orientations, and learning mechanisms, and we chart directions for further research and managerial actions.

Part-time employment is a vital portion of the U.S. labor force, yet research to date has provided only limited insights into how to successfully create and manage this sector of the workforce. We propose that these limitations are due, at least in part, to an inadequate explication of the levels issues inherent in this area. In this article, we present a summary framework of constructs at the economic, industry, organization, individual, and work levels that influence part-time work arrangements. We then specify a cross-level moderator model that examines how the number of hours worked by employees influences their attitudes and behaviors. We posit that this relationship is moderated by a number of contextual effects at multiple levels. Using this sample model, we demonstrate the way in which researchers examining part-time work arrangements can effectively address levels issues. Our article concludes with a discussion of the implications that this summary framework has for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

The dynamics of the physician knowledge system in the Southern California Region of Kaiser Permanente are explored. The framing and analysis use concepts from the knowledge management literature and network theory. The criticality of this issue to the establishment of sustainable healthcare relates to the lynchpin nature of embedding evidence-based knowledge in healthcare practice and the simultaneous challenge of combining this with clinical knowledge that derives from practice.

The case study is compiled from longitudinal interviews with over 40 physicians and other stakeholders and an examination of archival information including published articles generated by the learning system.

The socio-technical approach to building this learning system was critical given the expectations of physicians for autonomy in making clinical decisions with respect to their patients. This robust learning system builds on rich professional and organizational networks, is led by physicians, and builds on and extends the foundation of evidence relating to quality and value. The goals of the physician practice and a robust measurement and feedback system provide focus for the learning system.

Accelerating the incorporation of evidence-based practice and increasing the scope and reach of the learning system entails building physician networks, having a robust system for critically examining and extending evidence, and a clear linkage to valued outcomes.

This detailed examination of the dynamics of knowledge absorption extends understanding of the capacity of medical care systems to absorb evidence-based knowledge.