Considering Planned Change Anew: Stretching Large Group Interventions Strategically, Emotionally, and Meaningfully

Abstract

Large Group Interventions, methods for involving “the whole system” in a change process, are important contemporary planned organizational change approaches. They are well known to practitioners but unfamiliar to many organizational researchers, despite the fact that these interventions address crucial issues about which many organizational researchers are concerned. On the other hand, these interventions do not appear to be informed by contemporary developments in organizational theorizing. This disconnect on both sides is problematic. We describe such interventions and their importance; illustrate them with extended descriptions of particular Future Search and Whole‐Scale™ change interventions; summarize research on strategy, emotion, and sensemaking that may inform them; and suggest questions about the interventions that may stimulate research and reflection on practice. We also discuss conditions that may foster effective engagement between Large Group Interventions practitioners and organizational researchers. Our approach represents a way to conduct a review that combines scholarly literature and skilled practice and to initiate a dialog between them.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Bob Marshak, Emily Axelrod, Dick Axelrod, Frank Barrett, Al Blixt, Art Brief, Barbara Bunker, Jeffrey Ford, Gerry Johnson, Jim Walsh, and Marvin Weisbord for their assistance in the development of this paper and their helpful comments on earlier drafts. We also appreciate Panera Bread Company for offering a hospitable location for a good deal of the work on the paper.