Andrew H Van De Ven

University of Minnesota | UMN · Department of Work and Organizations

In a world of organizations that are in constant change, scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collab...

Organizations around the world are designing new forms of organizing in order to deal with the challenges of advances in information technology and digitization that promote increases in customization and innovation in the face of global competition. This paper presents a case study examining the challenges experienced by a large multinational firm...

Opportunities and Challenges of Engaged Indigenous Scholarship—ADDENDUM - Volume 14 Issue 3 - Andrew H. Van de Ven, Alan D. Meyer, Runtian Jing

Management and Organization Review (MOR) is announcing a renewed initiative that seeks to encourage and publish research reporting engaged indigenous scholarship in China. MOR invites empirical as well as conceptual studies of indigenous phenomena related to management and organizations. MOR welcomes exploratory studies of new, emerging, and/or poo...

Chance serves as the gate to organizational change. Based on a relational view of chance, we propose that in an organizational context, the chance to change is affected by the perceptions of change agents and the affordance of situational momentum, and that different time points of change are associated with different degrees of chance favorability...

The dominant model of behavioral learning may not apply to organizations because it assumes that the people involved agree in their outcome assessments of actions and have relatively equal power to engage in joint learning. We relax these assumptions of consensus and power balance in order to apply the model to organizational (as opposed to individ...

This research examines whether relationships between change resistance and its consequences and antecedents strengthen or weaken over time during an extended duration of organizational change. In 40 health care clinics undergoing a three-year period of significant organizational changes, we found that resistance to change had increasingly negative...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical contribution of Li’s (2016) “Yin-Yang balancing” approach of paradox management, as well as its future development to guide paradox management research across the east and west contexts. Design/methodology/approach It begins by recognizing the importance of paradox management resear...

Purpose: Scale-up and spread of evidence-based practices is one of the most important challenges facing health care. We tested whether a statewide initiative, Depression Improvement Across Minnesota-Offering a New Direction (DIAMOND), to implement the collaborative care model for depression in 75 primary care clinics resulted in patient outcome im...

The purpose and nature of corporate governance practices are contested, as is the professional nature of scholarship in the area of governance and management. As a result, the highly fragmented landscape of management research constitutes a major barrier for scholars to contribute to the professionalization of governance and management practice. In...

The purpose of this symposium is twofold. First, we seek to specify the key distinctions and similarities between the Eastern and Western approaches to paradox so as to gain special insights into the global nature of paradox in the cultural context. Second, we seek to examine the critical implications of such distinctions and similarities for manag...

Many organizations have achieved high levels of quality performance only to lose it later on. These firms that were once quality leaders can no longer compete on the quality of their products or services. This research develops a theoretical understanding of how organizations can sustain a quality advantage. It offers a conceptual definition of sus...

Replication arguably has a role to play in advancing management scholarship. In related fields such as psychology and economics, results have been challenged because other scholars could not replicate them. The issue has attracted so much attention that a few months ago The Economist devoted its cover story to the need for replication in academic r...

Not all employees respond alike to organizational changes that they experience in common. In 40 health care clinics undergoing significant organizational change, we found that the level of resistance among employees can be attributed to their occupational status, to organizational fairness, to supportive leadership, and to changes in person-organiz...

The Chinese cultural logics of change offer a rich understanding of organizational change. We address three key aspects of the Chinese yin-yang view of change: context, process, and actions. A case study of Chengdu Bus Group CBG enables us to develop a conceptual model that examines organizational change in a Chinese indigenous context. The model r...

This case describes a Ministry Positioning process that will enable the management of Ascension Health to enact designs suitable for the rapidly changing healthcare industry. Ascension Health is the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in the United States with $21 billion in annual revenues and a presence in 24 states and the District of Colum...

This session features Mr. Ruimin Zhang, Chairman and CEO of the Haier Group of China, who has become well known for his innovative model of management. His Win-Win Model of People-Opportunity Integrationaims to release every employee's potential power of self-motivation, self-innovation, and self-management by creating thousands of small, self-mana...

This symposium invites panelists to reflect on the various ways in which the past is leveraged in organizational life, enable changing the future. It is first and foremost an exploratory symposium aiming to generate debate and reflection on a topic, which, for the moment, has not been subjected to systematic analysis. A key idea of the proposed sym...

Not all employees respond alike to organizational changes that they experience in common. In 40 health care clinics undergoing significant organizational change, some employees perceived decreases, some increases, and still others no changes in organizational effectiveness. Using annual survey data over three years, we find that different responses...

Despite the ubiquity as well as criticality of the management function, the theoretical reconciliation of core management ideas and their broad-based central insights has long proved elusive. Management has a rich, multi-disciplined, multi-level, and multi-methodological history yet (or perhaps because of this) there remains no single, comprehensiv...

The many randomized trials of the collaborative care model for improving depression in primary care have not described the implementation and maintenance of this model. This paper reports how and the degree to which collaborative care process changes were implemented and maintained for the 75 primary care clinics participating in the DIAMOND Initia...

The “Reflections on Experience” section of the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Management Inquiry contained six articles examining the challenges associated with contemporary university governance and called for new theory and approaches. In this article, we respond by reporting one university’s innovative governance design that provides an imagi...

This article develops an empirically grounded process model of how managers in organizations respond to coexisting paradoxical tensions. With a longitudinal real-time study, we examine how a telecommunications firm copes with an organizing paradox between market and regulatory demands and how this paradox influences belonging and performing paradox...

Innovation is often thought of as an outcome. In this chapter we review the literatures on innovation processes pertaining to the invention, development, and implementation of ideas, as they unfold within firms, across multi-party networks, and within communities. Moreover, we explore four different kinds of complexities associated with innovation...

Much has been learned, and even more needs to be learned, about designing organizations and institutions. Since the 1960s this research has evolved from contingency to configuration, to complementarity, to complexity and creative theories of organizing. This chapter reviews these evolving theories (better called perspectives) and urges scholars to...

Process studies focus attention on how and why things emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. We identify various ontological assumptions underlying process research, explore its methods and challenges, and draw out some of its substantive contributions revealed in this Special Research Forum on Process Studies of Change in Organization and...

Process studies focus attention on how and why things emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. We identify various ontological assumptions underlying process research, explore its methods and challenges, and draw out some of its substantive contributions revealed in this Special Research Forum on Process Studies of Change in Organization and...

This paper develops and tests a multilevel organizational contingency theory for designing headquarters—subsidiary relations. We use frontier analysis to overcome problems that have hampered advancements in organizational contingency theory in general and headquarters—subsidiary relationships in particular. Based on a longitudinal study of a large...

This paper proposes that individual rational behavior (from neoclassical economics) and collective reasonable behavior (from jurisprudence) serve as the microfoundations of markets and institutions, respectively. We propose that incorporating a collective standard of reasonable behavior can significantly enrich mainstream theories of organization a...

abstractThis commentary discusses the four articles in this special MOR issue on indigenous management research in China. It begins by recognizing the importance of indigenous research not only for understanding the specific knowledge of local phenomena, but also for advancing general theoretical knowledge across cultural boundaries. Challenging to...

We test the relative influence of power and social embeddedness in mobilizing resources between newly-formed businesses and other organizations by re-examining longitudinal data from the Van de Ven and Walker (1984) study of interorganizational relations. We find that resource flows to entrepreneurial ventures are predicted by the total dependence...

This essay describes different kinds of research questions, process perspectives, and types of explanations to argue pragmatically that the quality and coherence of process research will be enhanced when these ingredients of process research are aligned. A distinction is made between questions about process past (what has happened?), process presen...

In support of EURAM's vision of ‘building a community of engaged scholars’, I propose undertaking indigenous research in diverse European countries and cultures. I begin by recognizing the importance of indigenous research not only for developing an understanding of, and identity with, context‐specific management issues and problems in local Europe...

Practice theories of implementing change are lagging behind process theories of organizational change and development. To address this gap, this paper examines common breakdowns in implementing four process models of organization change: teleology (planned change), life cycle (regulated change), dialectics (conflictive change), and evolution (compe...

Andrew Van de Ven, the Vernon H Heath Professor of Organizational Innovation and Change at the Carlson School of the University of Minnesota, won the 2008 Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management for Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research. During a visit to London Business School's Institute for Innovation and En...

We propose that management scholars can improve their research by triangulating alternative philosophies of science to gain a richer and more holistic understanding of complex managerial problems. We illustrate the proposition by triangulating with three scientific philosophies – positivism, postmodernism, and critical realism – to design a study i...

Examines the internal corporate venturing process by comparing trial-and-error learning with action persistence. The model developed focuses on two key concepts – uncertainty and ambiguity. To examine numerous hypotheses that result from this model, data were gathered from a venture within a large diversified corporation that was to develop cochlea...

Evaluates the factors influencing the successful startup of new firms from three different perspectives: entrepreneurial, organizational, and ecological. Firm performance and development stages of the new ventures are also examined. Data are drawn from on-site interviews with and questionnaire responses from company principals and evaluation forms...

This research examines how integrative methods of open communications, involvement, and conflict resolution in implementing an organizational change initiative moderate the relationship between cognitive diversity among employees and organization performance. In this longitudinal study of 37 medical clinics, we find that the interaction of integrat...

Entrepreneurs are often portrayed as rugged individualists who go it alone to build new organizations and programs that maximize their self-interests. This portrayal is incomplete, because it does not account for the fact that entrepreneurs also pursue collective interests. It fails to recognize a basic paradox in human beings of simultaneously see...

The relationship between theory and practice, research and action, is fundamental to all fields of applied social science. Should research findings and knowledge be useful for science, practice, and policy? If so, how should such research be designed, carried out and disseminated to achieve the twin goals of rigor and relevance? These challenges ar...

This article describes the initial stages of an endeavor to bring about an integration of strategic management and human resource management in a major manufacturing organization—3M. The focus is on the agenda of the organization's Vice President of Human Resources for bringing about the innovation through a systematic program of cultural analysis,...

We introduce a collective action model of institutional innovation. This model based on converging perspectives from the technology innovation management and social movements literature, views institutional change as a dialectical process in which partisan actors espousing conflicting views confront each other and engage in political behaviors to c...

We examine three related ways in which the gap between theory and practice has been framed. One approach views it as a knowledge transfer problem, a second argues that theory and practice represent distinct kinds of knowledge, and a third incorporates a strategy of arbitrage-leading to the view that the gap is a knowledge production problem. We pro...

Bill McKelvey's commentary is provocative, but four points need correction. (1) The purpose of engaged scholarship is not just to advance practice but to create scientific knowledge. (2) Bill's food chain metaphor mistakenly views the gap between science and practice as a knowledge transfer problem. (3) Bill ignores the impact of biases of research...

Scholars hold different views about whether organizations consist of things or processes and about variance or process methods for conducting research. By combining these two dimensions, we develop a typology of four approaches for studying organizational change. Although the four approaches may be viewed as opposing or competing views, we see them...

The design of work has been and will continue to be a central problem challenging organization theory and practice. The system of arrangements and procedures for doing work affects all workers every day throughout the world. Work is changing dramatically. In an increasingly global and knowledge-intensive economy, work design is no longer contained...

The shift of technological innovations from physicaldevices to knowledge-based services is examined.Four sectors of theindustrial infrastructure (institutional arrangements, resource endowments,consumer demand, and proprietary activities) are presented to aid in theanalysis. Technological innovation is presented as being collective, embedded, andem...

What explains the dramatic technical and social changes observed in much of the world during the past century? Responses to this kind of question vary, depending on the degree to which one assumes that social life is a product of individualism or institutionalism. Individualists view social and economic change as the product of individual agency, w...

The jacket of this book shows a man peeping through the shell of the stars and planets to discern the glorious order behind their complex movements. What he sees is not a simple clockwork, but a dazzling manifold of spirits and mechanisms that realize the will of these spirits. Sometimes the order beneath complexity—while more illuminating than the...

In a world of organizations that are in constant change scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collabo...

Few issues are characterized by as much agreement as the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for social and economic development. Schumpeter’s (1942) emphasis on the importance of innovation for the business firm and society as a whole is seldom disputed. Although entrepreneurship is widely recognized as a central dynamic in the startup of new...

Aldrich [J. Manag. Inq. 10 (2001) 115] importantly points out that not all forms of process research are equal or the same. He emphasizes the need to distinguish between outcome-driven and event-driven research. We build upon Aldrich's distinctions, arguing that event-driven and outcome-driven explanations represent different kinds of process and v...

Based on an analysis of knowledge-intensive innovations, this paper argues that much of the knowledge that provides distinctive competence for sustained competitive advantage is context specific. The development of this competence is a path-dependent process of numerous learning events in particular situations and practices. Because competence is e...

This longitudinal study examines the individual transition journeys of physicians as their private medical practices are acquired by a large integrated health care system. We test the proposition that transition patterns (trends in an individual's commitments to organization and profession over time) are a function of individual differences in year...

William W. George, chairman and CEO of Medtronic, Inc., delivered the keynote address and received the Distinguished Executive of the Year Award at the Academy of Management's annual conference in Washington, D.C., in August. His leadership exemplifies the highest ideals and values of the Academy's Distinguished Executive Award. His address focused...

Competitive and regulatory forces have spurred the consolidation of health care provider and payer groups into large integrated care delivery systems that purchase freestanding clinics. Many private practitioners, unable to stand alone against these competitive pressures, are selling their practices and becoming employees, often for the first time...

Stochastic modeling derives structure from event sequence data based on event-to-event linkages. This approach yields an account of development in which each event is treated as meaningful in its own right. But it is often the case that there are broader patterns of development, phases or stages comprised of individual events. In this case, the eve...

While the variance approach offers good explanations of continuous change driven by deterministic causation, this is a limited way to conceptualize change and development. It overlooks many critical and interesting aspects of change processes. However, because most organizational scholars have been taught a version of social science that depends on...

In a world of organizations that are in constant change, scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collab...

In chapter 8 event time series were subjected to event time series regression analysis (ETSRA) to determine what type oflinear patterns existed in the temporal data. Recent advances in the theory and mathematics of nonlinear dynamical systems enable us to further distinguish between orderly, linear patterns of change and disorderly or random patter...

Organizations change constantly on many different levels. The processes that we see unfolding in these changes—whether they pertain to transitions in individuals’ jobs and careers, group formation and development, or organizational innovation, growth, reorganization, and decline—have been exceedingly difficult to explain or predict. Kurt Lewin remi...

In a world of organizations that are in constant change, scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collab...

Explaining organizational change has been an enduring quest of scholars in many disciplines. Change and development processes are central to such organizational phenomena as careers, group decision-making, organizational strategy formation, innovation, and interorganizational networks. Contemporary intellectual currents, exhibited in the rising int...

In a world of organizations that are in constant change, scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collab...

Chapters 6 and 7 introduced Markov and phasic analysis, which help us understand the probabilistic and temporal relationships among individual events. As we have noted, these techniques preserve the nominal character of events. Stochastic modeling uses event types directly, while phasic analysis explores structures of phases that reflect the event...

We noted in chapter 2 that among the basic requirements of process research are the ability to identify and characterize event sequences and the capacity to identify temporal dependencies in event sequences. Stochastic modeling of event sequences is directly applicable to both tasks, because it captures dependencies among sequential observations. S...

In a world of organizations that are in constant change, scholars have long sought to understand and explain how they change. This book introduces research methods that are specifically designed to support the development and evaluation of organizational process theories. The authors are a group of highly regarded experts who have been doing collab...

While the vast majority of research to date has focused on the first question, recently there has been a growing interest in the second question, which is concerned with the temporal sequence of events that unfold as an organizational entity changes over time. Process studies are fundamental to understanding the dynamics of organizational life and...

This paper draws upon research in the economics of technical change and in the social construction of technology to develop and test a process model of strategy. We conducted a longitudinal study of leading firms that were sponsoring new and competing product technologies in two industries: the videoplayer industry and the medical diagnostic imagin...

This article introduces a typology and evaluates a set of measures for studying professional and administrative models of organizing. Four mental models of organizing are contrasted: the bureaucratic system model, the market enterprise model, the professional group model, and the community service model. These organizing models reflect the internal...

How do new industries emerge? What are the roles of individual firms in creating an industry? These questions not only have significant implications for national industrial policy, but they are critical to managers of technological innovations. Although most innovations represent small increments of normal change that refine and improve an establis...

Little is known about how innovations emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. Not only has little systematic research been conducted to examine how innovations develop over time, but few process theories adequately explain the sequence of events in the innovating process. Yet an appreciation of temporal processes is fundamental to managing i...