Starke et al. (2011), Journal of Organizational Change Management

Exploring archetypal change: the importance of leadership and its substitutes

At a small manufacturer, most of a transformation happened after its champion CEO left and an unsupportive former CEO returned, with supervisors, staff and new systems filling the leadership gap.

Parts of the Loop it informs

Make sense togetherMixed Start it close to the workMixed Review, then hold stillSupports

Read the original paper

Summary written by Unfrozen from the published abstract, then checked twice by independent reviewers against the source. Loop coding is exploratory and AI-assisted, pending human verification. Spot an error? Email info@unfreeze.us and it gets fixed.

Questions this study helps answer

What the research saysShould change be top-down or bottom-up?What the research saysHow long should a change settle before the next one?What the research saysWhy do changes stall after launch?

Related studies

Huy (2011)In a three-year case at a large tech firm, executives treating strategy as a purely task-focused job unintentionally stirred middle managers' group identities around tenure and language; the resulting emotions saw managers, even ones executives promoted, back or quietly brush off an initiative.Huy et al. (2014)Over three years of a radical change, middle managers went from supporting their top leaders to mutiny as they reassessed whether those leaders were legitimate, and their emotional reactions fed rising resistance.Hope (2010)In an insurance company's change effort, middle managers used their business expertise and political moves to steer how even their bosses understood the change.Agostino et al. (2013)In an Italian court house modernisation, middle-manager 'mediators' translated leaders' ideas in three distinct ways, and the approaches differed in how well they turned those ideas into everyday work.