Page 210 - The Resilient Organization

196 Part Four: Step 3. Rehearsing a Culture of Resilience

he would have supported whatever big revitalizing project the leaders of the
continent wanted. “Taking what the system gave,” he allowed the existing
European system and the movement that was emerging in support of
change to set boundaries. Delors became a well-respected broker, finding
aspects of market change that would appeal to each political group.
ODD also used tactics on Fligstein’s list, and those tactics contributed to
successes. Advocating scenario planning was a way for people with no
formal authority to alter agendas. Scenario planning’s standardized, non-
partisan nature gave the scenario-planning experts an air of goallessness.
ODD’s willingness to take over activities such as the editing of newsletters
was a tactic of “taking what the system gives.”
However, ODD never used these techniques in a coherent approach to
the political problem that DiMaggio and Fligstein have seen as central:
creation of a core group powerful enough to truly change the rules. Fligstein
never closely examined the EU officials whose role paralleled that of the
ODDsters—the group that originally conceived the idea of a Single Market
Program. But he has implied that they always recognized that their success
would require finding major support at higher levels. If ODD had made
slightly better use of Fligstein’s tactics, it still might have failed. But there is
every reason to believe there was also a possibility for great success.

ODD’s Contribution to Institutional Knowledge

Although ODD did not achieve dramatic changes in the rules in AT&T, its
partial successes strongly suggest that mechanisms of social movements can
achieve great impact in organizations. ODD showed the power in a large
organization of visions that start among less powerful people and then
expand their reach outside hierarchical channels, of people making
sacrifices for a cause, and of the use of catchy phrases and simple, some-
times stylized facts to recruit new believers. In a world where many firms
face rapid change that undermines traditional business models, social move-
ments within organizations seem an effective way of using firms’ accumu-
lated knowledge to evolve in needed ways.
For this to happen, however, both activists and senior managers will
have to learn from the experiences of ODD and other activist endeavors.
ODD’s experience shows that activists can easily learn to talk to and work