Performance-Driven Organizational Change

Book excerpt: In this book, Lex Donaldson, one of the leading scholars in the field of organization theory, introduces a compelling theory of performance-driven organizational change, Organizational Portfolio Theory. In explaining why organizations change and also why they fail to change, the theory reconceptualizes the organization as a portfolio with a number of different causes of organizational performance varying over time. The author argues that without a performance crisis there is a good chance that necessary organizational changes will not be forthcoming, and that moreover, the adaptive change induced by the crisis creates the capacity for fresh organizational growth.