Radical Change Accidentally: The Emergence and Amplification of Small Change

Abstract

A decision to offer breakfast to homeless people led to radical change in a church and its environment. Existing theories of change do not fully explain observations from our qualitative study; however, complexity theory constructs suggest how and why such change emerged. We offer four key findings. First, the radical change was unintended, emergent, and slow. Second, destabilizing conditions helped small changes to emerge and become radical. Third, subsequent actions amplified an initial small change and, though not intended to do so, promoted radical change. Finally, the dynamic interaction of amplifying actions, contextual conditions, and small changes led to continuous radical change.We are grateful to our colleagues who contributed to the early stages of this research:

The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization

“…First, McKelvey & Lichtenstein (in press) suggest that emergence occurs in increasingly complex stages and Plowman et al (2007) found some support for this idea. Learning more about the role of leadership at each stage of emergence will be important in furthering our understanding of leaders as enablers.…”

“…1 This preamble study relied on an inductive approach, which is consistent with methodology used in similar research (Eisenhardt, 1989b;Isabella, 1990). Our initial review of decision-making processes ultimately became a study of continuous, radical change, which had started five years prior to our initial study (see Plowman et al, 2007). Findings from the study of radical change suggested that leadership was one of several factors contributing to the radical, and unintended organizational transformation at Mission Church.…”

“…From our earlier study of emergent radical change (Plowman et al, 2007), we observed an organization that underwent radical transformation, which emerged from the interactions of a few people within the organization. These people were not the leaders of the organization and they acted from no official role or authority when they started the Sunday morning breakfasts that ultimately led to a shift in identity from a "silk and stockings" church to one focused on a ministry with the marginalized, in particular, the homeless.…”

“…In a recent study, Plowman et al (2007) observed multiple contextual factors or "tension gradients" ) that create instability and move organizations towards disequilibrium. A complexity theory perspective suggests that leaders play a role in destabilizing systems by disrupting existing processes or patterns of behavior, thereby pushing the systems towards chaos (Regine & Lewin, 2000) or regions of complexity (Maguire & McKelvey, 1999).…”

“…We base our framework on: (1) characteristics of complex adaptive systems, whose central feature is emergence, and (2) observations from a qualitative case study of a dying organization that underwent a major unintended radical change, which ultimately proved successful in reversing the decline (Plowman, Baker, Beck, Kulkarni, Solansky, & Travis, 2007). The case study on emergent radical change provided us the unique opportunity to re-visit our data and observe closely what it was that the leaders, who did not initiate the radical change, actually did as the organization's future was emerging.…”