Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow

Abstract

Foreword This author maintains that growing organizations move through five distinguishable phases of development, each of which contains a relatively calm period of growth that ends with a management crisis. He argues, moreover, that since each phase is strongly influenced by the previous one, a management with a sense of its own organization's history can anticipate and prepare for the next developmental crisis. This article provides a prescription for appropriate management action in each of the five phases, and it shows how companies can turn organizational crises into opportunities for the future growth. Mr. Greiner is associate professor of organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School and the author of several Harvard Business Review articles on organization development.