Organizational Change Theory Article Review

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Organizational Change Theory

Organizational change

O'Reilly, Charles a. & Michael L. Tushman. (2004). The ambidextrous organization.

The Harvard Business Review.

It is often said that generals are always trying to win the last war, rather than look ahead to what they need to do to succeed in the future. This is also true of business organizations, according to Charles O'Reilly and Michael L. Tushman's article "The ambidextrous organization" for The Harvard Business Review "Most successful enterprises are adept at refining their current offerings, but they falter when it comes to pioneering radically new products and services" (Reilly & Tushman 2004: 1). Some theorists state that radical innovation by established organizations is a virtual impossibility. However, Reilly and Tushman contend that innovation is possible, provided the organization remain sufficiently flexible.

The company must sustain its innovation at several levels. Incremental innovation (think Apple's continual 'retooling' of its music players and smartphone) is required on a consistent basis.

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But there must also be architectural innovations (such as the creation of iTunes, changing the way music was sold) in terms of company approaches and structures. Finally, there is a need for radical, ground-breaking discontinuous innovations that fundamentally create a 'break' with the existing product landscape (the iPhone). Maintaining all of these types of innovation is necessary to generate a truly creative corporate culture.

The most fruitful type of creative organizations, according to the authors, are designed along the lines of what they call ambidextrous organizations, "where the breakthrough efforts were organized as structurally independent units, each having its own processes, structures, and cultures but integrated into the existing senior management hierarchy" (Reilly & Tushman 2004: 2). One example of this is the U.S.A. Today organization, which shelters a wide array of newspapers and other news sources under its umbrella. On one hand, all….....

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