In today's individual-centered world of work, fragmentation, new work practices, and spatial arrangements pose a threat to experiences of community, compromising collective action. How can community be fostered and what effects does it have in organizational contexts? My article addresses this issue through the notion of communitas, namely, powerful spontaneous experiences of existential togetherness. Organization scholars have theorized communitas in change processes as the outcome of human orchestration and symbolic meaning. In contrast, this study explores the connection between communitas and affect - the fluctuating intensities that emerge in the encounters between humans and nonhuman materialities, such as physical environments or artifacts - and how they relate to change. Drawing on ethnographic materials from a coaching process with a child psychiatric team, the study asks: How can communitas emerge affectively in a change process? What does communitas enable as it emerges in a change process? The study contributes to the nascent discussion on communitas in organization studies by conceptualizing it as a relational accomplishment of human bodies and nonhuman elements. Unfolding on its own terms, communitas co-emerges with amplifying affective resonance and negative capability. Mutually co-constitutive, the three strengthen connection, enabling the collective to overcome hardships, move forward, and refine its collaborative practices.MAD statementHow can community be fostered and what does it enable in organizational contexts? The article explores this through the notion of communitas, namely, powerful spontaneous experiences of existential togetherness. Suffused with affect - a form of energy and potentiality that connects bodies to each other - communitas does not obey human orchestration. However, it can be favoured by a culture that encourages ambiguity, difference, and uncertainty; values knowing and learning through the body, imagination, and intuition; and allocates time for relational work. When communitas does arise, it strengthens the connection among participants and opens possibilities for change, for example by enhancing multiplicity and the motivation to develop work practices.
This special issue explores the holding together of organizations in times and spaces that, due to concerns related to climate change, technological advancements, and geopolitical developments among others, may be called disruptive. These are times marked by instability, uncertainty, and rapid change. With this special issue, a discussion around the meaning of community in these disruptive times and spaces is facilitated, and the articles together bring forward four themes. First, the articles provide insights into how change processes are possible to plan and facilitate but not to control entirely, and that community, therefore, can be both a process for accomplishing the change and a result of the change. Second, the articles highlight the centrality of affect to how change processes unfold, and how important it is, therefore, to acknowledge affect and learn to work with it during a change process. Third, the articles are a reminder about the ethical issues related to change processes, which is particularly sensitive when aiming at organizing for community. Fourth, the importance of including materiality as a crucial actor in organizing for community is brought forward. Together, the articles expand the exploration of organizing around a common object of concern to non-profit organizing efforts.
This article contributes to the debate on relational ethics in organizational studies, proposing affirmative ethics, derived from critical posthumanism, as an innovative analytical framework for organizing for community and the common good. Analysing the case of a spontaneous mutual aid organization during the pandemic, the article adopts Posthumanist Practice Theory (PPT) as a theoretical and methodological lens capable of capturing the movements of sociomateriality and affect as connective forces in the development of collective ethical practices. The PPT-based empirical analysis shows how affirmative ethics unfolds in an assemblage of bodies, affections and technologies. Furthermore, the contribution highlights how affirmative ethics enriches organizational research on relational ethics by overcoming anthropocentrism, strengthening the critical dimension, and tracing the forces of ethical action that guide collective action. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of Posthumanist Practice Theory as a methodological tool for analysing affirmative ethics in concrete contexts. Thanks to its focus on practices, material relations and collective processes, PPT enables us to observe the effects and potential of affirmative ethics in action, transforming it from a philosophical principle into a practical interpretative lens for analysing resistance, creativity and transformation in organizations.
Digital technologies transform internationalization strategies of multinationals and lead to significant changes in their organizational processes. In this paper, we investigate the digitalization of service multinationals in emerging markets, which present new business opportunities but also high risks due to fast-changing economic, institutional and political environments. Our aim is to identify key drivers and barriers to digitalization that are perceived by service multinationals expanding into emerging markets. We built a single case study of a Swiss bank developing wealth management services in Brazil and South Africa. Our findings show external and internal drivers and barriers to digitalization in fast-changing markets. We provide novel insights into the debate on digitalization and the internationalization of service multinationals.MAD statementThis article aims to Make a Difference (MAD) by investigating the digitalization of service multinationals. Our case study of a Swiss bank provides novel insights into key drivers and barriers to digitalization in fast-changing markets. While extant literature focuses on external and internal drivers, we uncover external and internal barriers to digitalization in the emerging market context. The identified factors are similar in Brazil and South Africa, but we also highlight several country-specific factors. Our findings show that service multinationals need to implement organizational change to overcome the perceived barriers in order to succeed in their 'digital' internationalization.
How can organizational practices expand, rather than constrain, possibilities and thereby support more inclusive communities, particularly those joining stigmatized persons? We can understand expansionary processes through Relational, Emergent, Transformative, Change-Oriented Organizations (RETCOs); this kind of organization prioritizes relationships, fluidity, and multiple interests over the supposed efficiency advantages of fixed roles, hierarchies, and outcomes (Chen & Mandiberg, 2024). Drawing on a qualitative and creative research project conducted in collaboration with 'Places for Connection' (PfCs) based in Brussels, we examine how RETCO practices support people who have histories of mental health difficulties by providing a space open to all (Walker & Thunus, 2020). We identify four interrelated RETCO practices that support creating and sustaining inclusive communities, or borderlands: first, the practice of placemaking concerns how growing communities infuse non-institutionalized spaces with meaning; second, the practice of inclusive hospitality involves welcoming all, regardless of their social, economic or health status; third, the practice of relationship-extending activities emphasizes forming connections within communities that animate PfCs, but also bridge these with larger communities; fourth, acceptance of ambiguity around attendance and activities cultivates trust that people will participate and that collective issues can be addressed through discussion and deliberation.MAD StatementHow can organizational practices expand, rather than constrain, possibilities and thereby support more inclusive communities, particularly those joining stigmatized persons? Research on Places for Connection (PfCs) in Belgium shows four practices: first, the practice of placemaking concerns how growing communities infuse non-institutionalized spaces with meaning; second, the practice of inclusive hospitality involves welcoming every person, regardless of their social, economic or health status; third, the practice of relationship-extending activities emphasizes forming connections within communities that animate PfCs, but also bridge these with larger communities; fourth, acceptance of ambiguity around attendance and activities cultivates trust that people will participate and that collective issues can be addressed through discussion and deliberation.
This study investigates how communities navigate the tensions that arise when agile and hierarchical organizing intersect within a financial organization. Drawing on an ethnographic study, we explore how communities navigate the contradictory demands of maintaining hierarchical consistency while pursuing agile adaptability. The paper argues that such tensions can produce organizational zombification, in which autonomy and self-organizing are gradually constrained by demands for control and predictability. In such situations, agile organizing remains visible in form but loses much of its collective and adaptive potential. Complexity leadership theory is used to understand how communities mitigate these tensions through shared coordination routines and visualization practices. The study describes how these practices connect actors and communities, structuring and facilitating interactions to reconcile needs for both alignment and autonomy. This balancing process is conceptualized as cyborgification, an organizational state where structural consistency merges with collective agency to ensure both predictability and adaptability. In doing so, the paper contributes to discussions of collective leadership by emphasizing how organizations can sustain collective agency by attending to both structural design and the social dynamics of power.MAD statementIn this paper, we align with the Anti-Zombie Leadership Alliance (Haslam et al., 2024), which argues that leadership must first and foremost be considered a collective endeavour. However, leadership is also a messy, ambiguous, and contested process, where responsibilities, capabilities, and interests in 'making leadership happen' are strongly shaped by specific actors. Our research shows how additional actors and communities can and should be involved in leadership practices to avoid leader-centricity that may zombify and stifle the organization. The study contends that communities have the potential to contribute considerably to collective leadership processes if we are willing to attend to recurring power imbalances, embrace organizational contradictions, and promote structures that enable collectivity.
As organizations adapt to evolving work practices, many are turning to activity-based work environments with the aim of enhancing employee interactions, particularly communication and collaboration. Despite the growing popularity of activity-based work environments, evidence on their actual impact remains limited and mixed. This study investigates how transitioning to activity-based work environments affects employee communication and collaboration, and how these effects depend on person-environment fit. Drawing on longitudinal survey data from three small organizations in Iceland, we analysed employee responses collected once before and three times after the activity-based work environment was implemented. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we find modest but statistically significant increases in communication and collaboration following the transition. Furthermore, the improvements were more pronounced among employees with a higher person-environment fit, suggesting that alignment between individual preferences and workspace design plays a key role in shaping outcomes. These findings contribute to a clearer understanding of how flexible workspace arrangements influence day-to-day employee interactions and highlight the importance of accounting for individual differences in evaluating such changes.MAD statementThis study provides important insights into how activity-based work environments influence workplace communication and collaboration, offering scholars and practitioners evidence-based guidance on designing workspaces that support effective employee interaction. By using longitudinal data and examining the moderating role of person-environment fit, the research demonstrates both the overall benefits of activity-based work environments and the value of aligning workspace design with individual needs. These findings address a growing organizational challenge: fostering communication and collaboration in increasingly flexible and dynamic work settings. As such, this work is highly relevant for those seeking to improve employee interaction, teamwork, and performance through thoughtful workplace design.
In this article, we report on our experiences of collaborating for seven years in an international virtual team of nine researchers, where a mix of digital technologies, were used for team collaboration. We explore the experiences of the team members as different digital technologies became entangled in the 'texture of practice' of our work community and tease out the implications for what this meant for us as team members. We offer two interconnected contributions. First, we show how adopting a relational perspective through the concept of texture of practices helps unpack the sociomaterial context in which virtual teamwork takes place, unveiling a complexity of different situated, individual and affective practices. Our research uncovers the micro-level practices that make team members visible to each other, thereby showing how different types of 'visibility' emerge relationally in practices rather than solely as an affordance of technology. Second, we show how this texture of practices renders team members visible to each other differently in time and in (the virtual) space, challenging the line-of-sight of the work-place community. Together, these contributions offer novel insight into the difficulties for the members of a work community to stay within the line-of-sight of each other when collaborating virtually.MAD-statementThis article aims to Make A Difference (MAD) by exploring how a virtual work community unfolds with digital technologies. A study of the mobilization of multiple digital tools for collaboration and interaction amongst the members of a virtual team highlights how the humans and technologies of the team became connected in a complex 'texture of practices'. When considering new technologies for collaboration in a work community, this needs to be considered to not disturb the work community's 'line-of-sight'.
Conversations lie at the centre of organizational life and have the potential to contribute to high organizational performance. They can also generate inefficient conversational patterns that pose challenges to organizational (everyday) life. However, most organizational members barely spend time thinking about the quality and effects of their own conversations. To be aware of the content, modes and styles of conversations and their impact on oneself and others implies being conversationally responsible. This systematic literature review aims to increase this awareness, especially in the context of organizational change. It responds to the need in organizational change scholarship of paying attention to the micro level, i.e. to people within organizations, by inquiring into how conversational dynamics affect organizational change. By analysing the available academic literature on the roles and effects of conversations for effective changes in organizational settings, the results show that changes in conversation need to be made at two levels: at the conversation level, i.e. by improving the conversational characteristics; and at the people level, i.e. by augmenting awareness on how people within organizations think about conversations. This review concludes with various future-research pathways on how and why conversations may affect organizational change in the current world.MAD statementThe current world is characterized by uncertainties and rapid changes. This paper explores conversations and their potential in the current era, particularly in the context of organizational changes. We review the literature with a focus on the microlevel of organizational change through conversational responsibility, which holds us accountable for what we do and say in (everyday) interactions at work. Because today's organizations live much shorter than ever before, employees need to be included in contributing to the 'health' of their place of work. Hence, to better serve organizational challenges, this state-of-the-art on conversations that facilitate organizational change is timely.
Despite the breadth of change management research, limited attention has been paid to how change management practices are adapted to specific organizational contexts. This review addresses this gap by examining how context is conceptualized in relation to change management. Based on a contingency approach, which underscores that processes and structures of an organization need to be adapted to the context for the organization to be successful, 73 papers are synthesized into six themes: (1) Perspective on context; (2) Internal and external contextual factors; (3) Assessment of contextual factors; (4) Perspective on change in change strategy; (5) Influence of contextual factors on the change management process; and (6) Evaluation of results. The findings reveal that most of the papers adopt an entity perspective on context, meaning context influences change, while about a quarter adopt the process perspective that context and change coexist. Contextual factors influence all phases of change but how is unclear. Most papers recommend assessing context before change, while some studies stress the need to reassess context during implementation. The review highlights theoretical and practical gaps and closes with a discussion of how managers might navigate and integrate divergent perspectives on context to adapt change management practices effectively.MAD statementSince limited research has focused on how change management practices are adapted to specific organizational contexts, this study provides an insightful overview of the dual perspectives on context - entity and process - and their implications for adaptation. The potential value of integrating insights from both perspectives to support a reflective and context-based adaptation of change management practices is highlighted. It discusses how managers could be inspired by both perspectives on context to help them to adapt their change management practices. Finally, an agenda is proposed to guide future research. By promoting context-based adaptation of change management practices, this research supports SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure).
This paper explores how strategies for change management impact commitment to organizational change in municipal amalgamations. The paper analyses survey data from 104 managers in two amalgamations involving five municipalities in Norway. The impacts of planned changes, stakeholder involvement, and strategies for change on the managers' commitment to change were analysed with partial least squared path modelling (PLS-PM). The analysis shows that the amalgamations used planned, top-down and results-oriented processes (change strategy E) most but in combination with involving, bottom-up, organizational development-oriented processes (change strategy O), contrary to what is prescribed in change management theory. The strategies for change and sub-system, organizational, and sectoral changes impacted the managers' commitment to the planned changes differently. The findings contribute to theory and practice by showing relationships between strategies for change and dimensions of commitment to organizational change in municipal amalgamations.MAD statementThis paper explores strategies for change and managers' commitment to organizational change in municipal amalgamations. The paper shows that leadership in change management in municipal amalgamations must expect to use several strategies for change, contrary to what is prescribed in change management theory, and also expect that strategies for change, and sub-system, organizational, and sectoral changes impact commitment to planned changes differently.
Job crafting is a tool used by employees in order to respond to and cope with implemented organizational change. This quasi-experimental study investigated the capacity of a leadership-level intervention to increase collaborative (team) job crafting within an organization that was attempting to mobilize employees and persuade them to embrace changes to their work design. Leaders attended a workshop that was designed to enhance their understanding of collaborative crafting and to facilitate discussion regarding their reactions and approaches to such behaviours. Over two measurement occasions, intervention teams split between teams whose members were collocated (n = 34) and teams whose members were dispersed (n = 29) were compared to collocated control teams (n = 23). Multi-level analysis revealed a significant increase in the intervention teams' collaborative crafting in comparison to the control teams. However, these effects were dependent on whether the team members were collocated. The findings advance job crafting literature by highlighting how leadership understanding of job crafting can directly influence the amount of collaborative crafting their teams exhibit. Second, the findings highlight how configurations of the physical workspace influence collaborative behaviours. Given the widespread adoption of new ways of working e.g. remote and hybrid models these findings provide timely insight.
To address the societal challenge of building resilient work systems, organisations increasingly depend on employees' adaptive performance, a key competence of the modern workforce. This study explored how distinct forms of autonomy (work scheduling, work criteria and work method autonomy) are translated into adaptive performance during crises by introducing job crafting towards strengths and demands-abilities (DA) fit as dual sequentially mediating mechanisms. Drawing on data from 1,259 employees and employing structural equation modelling, we found that work method and work criteria autonomy, but not work scheduling autonomy, significantly enhance adaptive performance through this sequential pathway. These findings advance the change management literature by demonstrating how work design can be strategically leveraged to support employees' effective adaptation under crisis conditions. We also extend the job demands-resources theory and enrich work design research with a more nuanced understanding of work autonomy. For practitioners, the results offer actionable insights: targeted enhancement of work method and work criteria autonomy can foster proactive, strengths-based job crafting and improve DA fit, thereby sustaining adaptive performance and contributing to resilient work systems amid sudden and unanticipated changes.
Organizational change typically disrupts employees' sense of 'who we are' as an organization. Research aimed at understanding the consequences of organizational change has primarily focused on identity threat when explaining resistance to change. In this review, we expand upon these findings by reframing organizational change as an opportunity to intentionally strive for identity gain, rather than merely mitigating identity threat. We introduce identity leadership as a key tool for navigating change by creating a sense of shared identity. Drawing on the social identity approach and the social identity model of leadership, we argue that leader prototypicality, identity entrepreneurship, identity advancement and identity impresarioship serve as pathways through which leaders and followers can co-produce a positive sense of 'us' and advance shared goals. We propose directions for future research, advocating longitudinal, process-oriented and multi-level studies that capture the various ways in which leaders and engaged followers collaborate during organizational change.MAD statementIn this review, we advance understanding of organizational change by shifting attention from identity threat to the conditions that enable identity gain. While previous studies have shown that change disrupts employees' shared identity, we draw on nascent literature that demonstrates how leaders and followers can instead experience identity gain - a process contingent on the intentional actions of organizational members. This reframing has practical implications; rather than merely managing resistance, change agents can design change initiatives that strengthen organizational identity.
Over the past twenty-five years, the Journal of Change Management has played a central role in rethinking how organisational change and transformation are understood. Early contributions moved beyond rational and planned change models by emphasising participation, learning and development. Later work increasingly framed change as continuous, relational and embedded in complex and dynamic systems. More recent studies extend this trajectory by focusing on emergence, collaboration and paradox, as well as on the broader societal, technological and ecological conditions shaping contemporary transformation.This article synthesises these developments through a longitudinal analysis of publications in the journal and identifies five periods in the evolving understanding of navigating transformation. It demonstrates how change theorising has shifted from organisation-centred and interventionist approaches toward more dialogical, context-sensitive and collaborative orientations. The article introduces the VOLCANIC perspective, which characterises contemporary environments as volatile, ongoing, liquid, complex, ambiguous, nested, interactive and chaotic, highlighting the limitations of linear and episodic change models. Building on this synthesis, navigating transformation is conceptualised as a distinct theoretical orientation and a future research agenda is proposed that outlines five interconnected pathways for advancing theory and practice.MAD statementThis article makes a difference by clarifying navigating transformation as a distinct theoretical orientation rather than a variant of organisational change. Through a longitudinal review of twenty-five years of publications in the Journal of Change Management, it offers scholars a coherent synthesis of how thinking about change has evolved toward relational, emergent and collaborative perspectives. For practitioners, the article provides a language to recognise when managing change is insufficient and navigating transformation becomes necessary in volatile and ambiguous contexts. By situating transformation within broader societal and ecological dynamics, the article also highlights why navigating transformation matters for addressing complex challenges that extend beyond organisational boundaries.
This paper discusses and critiques how collective and processual approaches to leadership risk replacing heroic romanticism with new idealisations. It identifies several underexamined areas in need of further attention: the neglect of power, hierarchy, and accountability; the romanticization of collective practice as inherently democratic; the assumption that purpose is morally 'good'; the downplaying of intent within strong process ontologies; and the omission of formal managers in research with a collective leadership lens. The paper calls for a more realistic leadership scholarship that attends to the everyday practices through which leadership is accomplished within organizational realities.MAD statementThis reflective piece aims to Make a Difference by challenging a proposed romanticism surrounding collective and processual leadership theories. It does so by arguing for a more realistic scholarship that foregrounds power, intent, accountability, and the role of formal managers. By critiquing the critique of leadership theory and research proposed in JCM, it illuminates how well-intended leadership theories risk overlooking everyday organizational life and human complexity. The critique provided is pivotal to further develop the theory of leadership as being collective and processual.
Over the past twenty-five years the Journal of Change Management (JCM) has been an important platform for advancing our understanding of how employees orient themselves toward organizational change. In this paper, we provide a critical overview of studies published in the JCM addressing readiness for change, resistance to change and employees' engagement over the past 25 years. Our synthesis reveals that readiness, resistance, and engagement are relational, dynamic, and contextually embedded processes. Rather than viewing readiness, resistance, and engagement as separate or opposing states, the journal's contributions highlight their interrelatedness as regards how employees make sense of, negotiate, and act upon change initiatives. After critically assessing these concepts from the perspectives of agency and change, we conclude by outlining a transformative future research agenda that revolves around the question of what kinds of changes the individual/manager of the twenty-first century needs to be ready for, resist and/or engage in. In sum, there is a need to reconsider our agency and relationship to change.MAD statementThis paper makes a difference by synthesizing 25 years of research from the Journal of Change Management to demonstrate that readiness, resistance, and engagement are not static states, but rather dynamic, relational and contextually embedded processes. By reframing these concepts through the lenses of agency and change, we challenge binaries and show how employees actively negotiate change. The paper sets out a research agenda to help researchers and practitioners in today's turbulent organizational and societal landscapes, where it is more critical than ever to discern what changes to resist, be ready for and engage with.
This leading article seeks to Make a Difference (MAD) by examining five key trajectories in Journal of Change Management: Reframing Leadership and Organizational Practice (JCM), focusing on transformation, emotions in organizational change, resistance and readiness, identity, and leadership. It interprets how these themes have influenced our understanding of organizational change and leadership over the past 25 years.
This article reviews twenty-five years of research on the role of emotions during organizational change and proposes avenues for future research. Building on an analysis of articles published in the Journal of Change Management: Reframing Leadership and Organizational Practice (JCM) from 2000 to 2024, we trace the development of scholarship in the field and synthesize contributions. We also uncover how the research published in JCM has substantially influenced the wider field by integrating perspectives from psychology, sociology, and institutional theory, thereby advancing an interdisciplinary understanding of the role of emotions in change processes. Persistent gaps remain, however, which also provide opportunities for future research. We identify collective emotions, emotional contagion, and affective climates; the politics of affect; and the non-linear and temporal nature of emotional experiences and responses as particularly promising areas for future research. Finally, advancing our understanding of the role of emotions during organizational change requires methodological pluralism and engagement with emerging organizational contexts such as digital transformation, sustainability transitions, and global crises. MAD statement Emotions make a difference in every stage of organizational change, shaping how individuals interpret, respond to, and engage with new initiatives. Over the past 25 years, research published in the Journal of Change Management has established emotions as a central force in change processes, showing how feelings such as fear, hope, and anger influence commitment, resistance, and withdrawal. This body of work has advanced an interdisciplinary understanding of emotions by integrating insights from psychology, sociology, and institutional theory. At the same time, it reveals important gaps, highlighting the need to explore collective emotions, emotional contagion, and affective climates, as well as the politics and evolving nature of emotional experiences. Addressing these gaps-especially in emerging contexts such as digital transformation, sustainability transitions, and global crises-will make a difference in how organizations lead change more effectively.
