Domain Statement

The Organization Change and Development (ODC) Division of the Academy of Management represents a community of scholars and practitioners who create and disseminate impactful and rigorous knowledge to enrich constructive change management and organization development. The domain of ODC includes the development of theory and innovative practice relevant to organization change.

Specifically, the ODC division is devoted to empirical research, theory development, and practical application concerning all forms of organization change. The ODC content domain focuses on the processes and outcomes of organization change and development at the individual, group, organizational, and institutional levels using multiple methods and perspectives. Major topics include:

  • The causes and dynamics of different forms and types of change, such as emergent change, evolutionary change, planned change, continuous change, and strategic change;
  • The forms, processes, and types of interventions—e.g. individual, group, and large scale—and the factors that influence their use and effectiveness;
  • The leadership and facilitation of organization change and development, such as forms and functions of leadership; leaders’ approaches, behaviors, and activities of leaders and change agents; leadership and change agent effectiveness, and the contextual factors that influence these;
  • The reactions and responses of people to change such as readiness for change, engagement in change, and resistance to change and the individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors that contribute to these responses and reactions;
  • The impact of contexts, such as organizational type, industry structure and dynamics, institutions, and nationality on the content and processes of organization change and development;
  • The integration of change outcomes such as human-social, financial, and environmental as system goals and measures of success;
  • The development of paradigms and methods that address values such as sustainability, justice, dignity, and integrity in ODC contexts and generate ethical, positive, and meaningful contributions as they relate to organizational change and its processes.

Last revised: August 2013