Rethinking Organizational Change: implications from the Chinese Shi (势)

Conventional organizational thinking and practices have been dominated by belief of stability, and change has been deemed as a disruptive and temporary aberration in the scheme of things. This mindset ignores the dynamic, living complexity of organizational life and very likely leads to the static management approaches which hinder and even sometimes destroy an organization’s effectiveness by restricting its ability to adapt to turbulent and chaotic events. Chinese notion of shi was embedded in the ancient Chinese thinking of change, which saw change and transformation as an endless flow and an essential feature of the universe, and it is implied by the changing process and can be made to play in one’s favor. As a strategy, shi offers us salutary lessons in modern organizational research and practices that rather than trying hard to control every chain of management and avoid chaos and uncertainty by relying on planning and modeling, organizations should rely on the inherent potential of the changing situation and be carried along by it as it evolves.