The New Story of Changing: Exploring Dichotomies in the Field of Organizational Change

This article theoretically explores and unpacks existing dichotomies in the field of organizational change. By revisiting the dichotomies “planned-emergent change” and “major-minor change,” the article finds that only relying on one extreme of a dichotomy gives a too simplistic view on change in organizations. Instead, the article proceeds by combining the two dichotomies and further explores the exceptions: the studies that do not only rely on one extreme of the dichotomies but instead moves along dichotomies. Based on the findings, the article suggests that future studies of organizational changes take an emic approach and study organizational changes in situ in order to capture the vividness of organizational changes.