IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-030-38324-4_84.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Marshak, Robert J.: Challenging Traditional Thinking About Organizational Change

In: The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers

Author

Listed:
  • Ruth Scogna Wagner

    (American University)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruth Scogna Wagner, 2021. "Marshak, Robert J.: Challenging Traditional Thinking About Organizational Change," Springer Books, in: David B. Szabla (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, edition 2, chapter 60, pages 999-1026, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-38324-4_84
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-38324-4_84
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-38324-4_84. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.