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Establishing Continuous Change

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The Palgrave Handbook of Managing Continuous Business Transformation

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Ideas in Brief

The subject of change has never been more relevant than today, as almost every organization has to undergo radical transitions to be able to continuously change and adapt to the dynamic economic conditions. Although the ability to change continuously has been primarily associated with private corporations, it is also relevant for public organizations because this type of organizations is moving from a public administration to a market-oriented logic. Based on an institutional theory framework, this study investigates how a shift from a public-administration logic to a market-oriented logic can be accomplished to enable the organizations to change continuously. Evidence from a German federal agency shows that a radical change is a possibility to establish the abilities of continuous change because it can be associated with shifts in power structures in the organizational field to overcome inert interdependencies between contextual intra-organizational dynamics. Accordingly, our results show that not only political authorities directly can intervene in a federal agency’s business activities but also can an institutional entrepreneur engage in activities to influence contextual dynamics and mobilize external allies for her/his change project. Therefore, our results unravel how change agents and a radical change project that affected organizational members’ value commitments can contribute to the institutionalization of a new template, that is, the template of continuous change.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany

    Erik Strauss

  2. Institute of Management Accounting and Control, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vallendar, Germany

    Jürgen Weber

  3. Corporate Development and Strategy, Swiss Ministry of Finance, Zurich, Switzerland

    Susanne Zubler

Authors
  1. Erik Strauss
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  2. Jürgen Weber
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  3. Susanne Zubler
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Correspondence to Erik Strauss or Jürgen Weber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CIO Magazine / CIOmove, München, Bayern, Germany

    Horst Ellermann

  2. Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Peter Kreutter

  3. WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vallendar, Germany

    Wolfgang Messner

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Strauss, E., Weber, J., Zubler, S. (2017). Establishing Continuous Change. In: Ellermann, H., Kreutter, P., Messner, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Managing Continuous Business Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60228-2_20

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