Midlands State University Library

Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail?

Hughes, Mark

Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail? created by Mark Hughes - Journal of change management Volume 11, number 4 .

A 70 per cent failure rate is frequently attributed to organizational-change initiatives, raising questions about the origins and supporting evidence for this very specific statistic. This article critically reviews five separate published instances identifying a 70 per cent organizational-change failure rate. In each instance, the review highlights the absence of valid and reliable empirical evidence in support of the espoused 70 per cent failure rate. Organizational-change research and scholarship now exists which enables us to question the belief in inherent organizational-change failure rates. Inherent failure rates are critically questioned in terms of the ambiguities of change, the context-dependent nature of change, competing perceptions, temporal aspects and measurability. In conclusion, whilst the existence of a popular narrative of 70 per cent organizational-change failure is acknowledged, there is no valid and reliable empirical evidence to support such a narrative.

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Organizational change--Methodological criticism--OrgSuccess factor

HD58.8 JOU