Robert J. Marshak: Challenging Traditional Thinking About Organizational Change

This chapter addresses the key contributions, insights, and legacies of Robert J. “Bob” Marshak to the field of organization development and change. The narrative opens with a discussion of the concepts, individuals, and institutions (US Army, American University, NTL, and US Department of Agriculture) that influenced his early career, honed his curiosity, and shaped his world view. The chapter highlights his pattern of perceiving change as a cognitive, linguistic construct and his exploration of the impact of language, symbolism, metaphors, and mindsets on how we think about change. Through his writings, Marshak poses critical questions, stimulates controversy, and challenges our beliefs and assumptions about how we think about what constitutes organizational change; for example, in an early article he contrasts our traditional Lewinian, Western perspectives on change with an unfamiliar Confucian, Eastern perspective of change. The chapter highlights his collaborations: in the 1980s and 1990s, he and cocreator Judith Katz explore the hidden dimension of change, creating the “Covert Process Model™”; in the 1990s and 2000s, he collaborates with numerous other scholars on articles and book chapters in the burgeoning field of organizational discourse studies; and in the 2000s and 2010s, he collaborates with Gervase Bushe with articles that explore the distinctions between classical OD (Diagnostic OD) and a new, emergent form of OD (Dialogic OD), culminating in a paradigm shifting book on Dialogic OD. The chapter concludes with a themed list of Marshak’s most influential writings.