Integrating the process orientation of Organizational Development with the content orientation of strategy, the authors present a model of change and show how organizations can learn when and how to make fundamental strategic changes. Lacks an index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Resource-Based and Evolutionary Theories of the Firm: Towards a Synthesis explores the intersection of evolutionary theories of the firm with an emergent body of research in the field of strategic management that has been broadly referred to as the `resource-based view of the firm'. The volume approaches strategic questions from several vantage points, thereby fostering a useful cross-fertilization of ideas. The views presented spring from a variety of sources, namely the principles of strategic management, organisation economics, and population ecology.

This Element presents several frameworks of strategy-making that serve to analyze organizational evolution processes within and beyond the firm. These frameworks form an integrated evolutionary ecological lens to examine the dynamics of strategy-making in organizational evolution. They highlight the role of the internal selection environment for analyzing processes and practices at various managerial levels (top, middle, and operational) within the organization. The Element also explains the role of the CEO in maintaining and updating the internal selection environment and contributing to organizational evolution, as well as making. fundamental decisions about organizational splits of the firm's business models as an ecosystem evolves.

The only constant is change—especially in today's business environment. Increasing globalization and the rise of new markets and technologies are forcing companies to compete in a more turbulent world than ever. To survive and thrive, organizations must be able to continuously evolve. Unfortunately, people tend to resist change. Uncertainty can be daunting, and people generally prefer to keep doing what they already know, avoiding unfamiliar situations, particularly in their work. The good news is that change can be managed using the same processes many organizations already use in their day-to-day project management activities. After all, every project results in some type of change to an organization. Building on the Project Management Institute's Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide, and drawing on the project management expertise of a wide variety of authors, How Successful Organizations Implement Change explains the critical aspects of the change management process and outlines the methods that project, program, and portfolio managers can utilize to bring effective change in a complex and transient business context. For practitioners who are directly leading the change effort as well as those affected by it; for executives formulating strategies, even those managing operations; and for academics researching or teaching others about organizational change management, the examples provided in this book cover a broad range of industries and areas of business. How Successful Organizations Implement Change combines the change management knowledge of experts, academics, researchers, and practitioners with tools, processes, and templates, all of which make this volume a valuable resource, a must-have, for leaders of change in organizations.

`I have no doubt this book will be read and used time and again by any scholar working within the evolutionary approach to organizations. I believe that it will also be of great interest to strategy scholars′ - Management `Rodolphe Durand has a compelling message for the growing community of evolutionary researchers in organization studies. Evolutionary researchers need to attend more carefully to historical and contemporary debates in the biological sciences if they are to avoid false tracks and simplisitic analogies. Durand offers here the foundations of a distinctive and authentic evolutionary theory that takes organizations seriously for what they are′ - Richard Whittington, Oxford University `This book fills an important gap in the study of organizations and strategy from an evolutionary perspective. It offers a synthetic approach to evolutionary analysis with grounded empirical examples that graduate students and seasoned scholars alike will find immensely useful. Durand′s OES model, rooted in a critical examination of philosophical and scientific writings on evolution, is particularly promising and provides a valuable guidepost for future research on organizations and strategic management′ - Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta How is economic evolutionary theory, in which organisations evolve according to environmental selection, reconciled with evidence of strategic management? This book is the first of its kind to propose a solution to this theoretical puzzle and engage readers in a balanced understanding of organizational evolution. Rodolphe Durand embarks upon a fresh assessment of the literature. His discoveries provide the foundation for a new theory of organizational selection and an organizational evolution and strategy model that reconciles economic evolution with strategic intentionality. Chapters include an examination of the work by Lamarck, Darwin and Spencer; a constructive appraisal of evolutionary theory applied to organisations and a summary of how the organizational evolution and strategy model will affect future theory and research.

`I have no doubt this book will be read and used time and again by any scholar working within the evolutionary approach to organizations. I believe that it will also be of great interest to strategy scholars' - Management `Rodolphe Durand has a compelling message for the growing community of evolutionary researchers in organization studies. Evolutionary researchers need to attend more carefully to historical and contemporary debates in the biological sciences if they are to avoid false tracks and simplisitic analogies. Durand offers here the foundations of a distinctive and authentic evolutionary theory that takes organizations seriously for what they are' - Richard Whittington, Oxford University `This book fills an important gap in the study of organizations and strategy from an evolutionary perspective. It offers a synthetic approach to evolutionary analysis with grounded empirical examples that graduate students and seasoned scholars alike will find immensely useful. Durand's OES model, rooted in a critical examination of philosophical and scientific writings on evolution, is particularly promising and provides a valuable guidepost for future research on organizations and strategic management' - Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta How is economic evolutionary theory, in which organisations evolve according to environmental selection, reconciled with evidence of strategic management? This book is the first of its kind to propose a solution to this theoretical puzzle and engage readers in a balanced understanding of organizational evolution. Rodolphe Durand embarks upon a fresh assessment of the literature. His discoveries provide the foundation for a new theory of organizational selection and an organizational evolution and strategy model that reconciles economic evolution with strategic intentionality. Chapters include an examination of the work by Lamarck, Darwin and Spencer; a constructive appraisal of evolutionary theory applied to organisations and a summary of how the organizational evolution and strategy model will affect future theory and research. - An associated web site with further information can be found at: http://studies.hec.fr/web/durand