Until recently organizational change discourse has been predominantly deficit based, mirroring the direction of management and business. The field is criticised for high failure rates (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Smith, 2002, c.f. Cantore, 2016) and consequently, there has been increasing interest in understanding how positive approaches to organizational change may counter this (Cooperrider & Sekerka, 2006; Cameron & McNaughton, 2016).
Historically, literature in organizational change has been practitioner lead and focussed on models, processes and practice. It is acknowledged that a more robust, evidence-based approach is required to guide practice (Barends, Janssen, ten Have & ten Have, 2014). As such, there is a need for theory to inform the direction of organizational change research. There are calls for research that connects positive psychology and positive organizational change (Cantore, 2017), and the wellbeing sciences more generally, including positive organizational psychology, positive organizational scholarship, positive organizational behaviour and the emerging field of positive systems science, have a lot to offer in this regard.
In this presentation, I explore how theories from the wellbeing sciences can inform organizational change research and create contexts in which people can thrive through change.