ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION

Organizational Adaptation

Momentum and Revolution in Organizational Adaptation

Introduction

Organizing and managing the strategy process are important issues, both in practice and research. Early writers on strategy used a formulation- implementation dichotomy. First the CEO of a company formulated a new strategic plan, supported by his staff and possible and possibly outside strategy consultants with a background in business and economics. Subsequently the strategic plan was implemented, possibly with the help of organizational change or development consultants, rather having a background in the social sciences. After that the long term business objectives were expected to be middle management and their subordinates. However, in practice too many strategic plans remain 'paper tigers', leading Ackoff to compare strategic planning to 'a ritual rain dance: it has no effect on the weather that follows it makes those engage in it feel that they are in control' (Ackoff 1979, 359) .

The Concept Momentum

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines momentum as”the impetus gained by a moving body" or "the driving force gained by the development of a process: the investigation gathered momentum".

Momentum

Momentum is a concept borrowed from physics. In formula: the momentum of a moving body equals mass times velocity (p=m*v). The first meaning, given above, is based on this use of the concept. But also the broader second meaning is inspired on this idea of the impetus of a moving body. Momentum in physics is a vector, which means that it has a certain magnitude (mass times velocity), as well as a certain direction (the direction of the velocity). In order to change momentum, i.e. a change in direction or an increase or decrease of velocity, one needs to apply force. In formula: the applied force equals the change in momentum (F = m*dv/dt).

The concept of momentum in its broader meaning of driving force is used in various other domains, although in a diversity of specific interpretations as we will see. Nevin et al. (1983) used it in a definition of perseverance of behaviour. They trained pigeons to press buttons to obtain certain gratifications. After changing the functions of the buttons the poor pigeons kept pressing the same buttons, now however without getting gratifications. They called this perseverance of behaviour behavioural momentum.

Outlook for momentum analysis of organizational change

As we advance above, many social science disciplines have taken the physical concept of momentum and applied it metaphorically to their respective fields, including the literature of organizational change (Mith 2001 159-286). As a result, a set of organizational work in the area that has tried to operationally the term momentum, and has given rise to different perspectives of analysis of the momentum of change in organizations. Synthetically, such work can be grouped into three perspectives of analysis, namely: (a) the policy perspective, to be led by the pioneering work of Dutton and Duncan (1987b) in which the policy vision is crucial in determining the momentum and, consequently, the actions to take, the collective perspective of the process, which conceptualizes the momentum as a dynamic force whose presence or ...