The Organizational Transformation Process: The Micropolitics of Dissonance Reduction and the Alignment of Logics of Action

Abstract

The research for this paper was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA 06995-030). Support was also provided by the R. Brinkley Smithers Institute for Alcohol-Related Workplace Studies and the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University. The authors wish to thank Steve Andrews, Edward Lawler, Valerie McKinney, Bryan Mundell, Ronald Seeber, Seymour Spilerman, Pamela Tolbert, and Harrison Trice for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Arguing that current theories of organizational change fail to pay adequate attention to how organizations move from one stable state to another, we generate a model of the organizational transformation process. We argue that to the degree that organizations are systems of exchange, they may be said to be transformed through a process by which the logics of action that parties bring to the exchange are aligned, misaligned, and realigned. Developing the concept of logic of action and drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, we examine how, in the face of a massive environmental shift (in this case, airline deregulation), changes at the institutional level were transformed into changes at the core level. The model is generated from an analysis of qualitative data on the impact of deregulation on labor and management's approach to employee emotional well-being in the airline industry.'