10.1177/0021886302250362 THE Zell ARTICLE / JOURNAL ORGANIZATIONAL OF APPLIED CHANGE BEHAVIORAL AS A PROCESS SCIENCE March 2003

Organizational Change as a Process of Death, Dying, and Rebirth Deone Zell California State University, Northridge

Bringing about change is difficult in any organization, but especially so in professional bureaucracies such as hospitals and universities in which highly trained and autonomous professionals, rather than administrators, largely control the core processes. Lacking in most models used to bring about change in organizations is understanding of how individuals and groups actually work through their resistance to change, which is key to whether change in a professional bureaucracy actually occurs. Interview data from professors in the physics department of a large, public university revealed that the department’s change process closely resembled that of death and dying identified by KublerRoss in her study of terminally ill patients. Theories from psychoanalysis and group dynamics are used to explain both individual and group-level change. The article concludes by discussing implications for helping professionals and their organizations undergo change and by suggesting areas for future research. Keywords: organizational change; grief and mourning; resistance to change; KublerRoss; psychoanalysis; group dynamics

Bringing about fundamental change is difficult in any organization, but especially so in professional bureaucracies such as hospitals and universities in which highly trained and autonomous professionals, rather than administrators, largely control the core proI am deeply indebted to Robert Hanna, Alan Glassman, and Wellford Wilms for their thought-provoking discussions, insightful comments, and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Clayton Alderfer and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions strengthened the article enormously. Deone Zell is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at California State University, Northridge. THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE, Vol. 39 No. 1, March 2003 73-96 DOI: 10.1177/0021886302250362 © 2003 NTL Institute

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cesses. In other types of organizations such as machine bureaucracies (e.g., post offices, automobile assembly plants) change may occur when a CEO initiates a new strategy or mandates new work practices over which subordinates have little say.1 But in professional bureaucracies, change in organizational core processes occurs only when professionals themselves agree to undergo change. According to Mintzberg (1983): Change in the professional bureaucracy does not sweep in from new administrators taking office to announce major reforms. Rather, change seeps in by the slow process of changing the professionals—changing who can enter the profession, what they learn in its professional skills (norms as well as skills and knowledge), and thereafter how willing they are to upgrade their skills. (p. 213)

Convincing professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and professors to make fundamental changes in their work practices is difficult because typically they have invested huge amounts of time and resources into their careers and are guided by entrenched beliefs and values established during years of indoctrination and training. Often they are passionate about their fields and consider their work more a “calling” than a job. Due to their high skill levels, they are given considerable control over their work, and they hold a considerable amount of power. They tend to work in environments that are inherently democratic and are accustomed to having a voice in organizational change efforts. As a result of their autonomy and deeply ingrained patterns of beliefs and behaviors, unless professionals agree with proposed or necessary changes in an organization’s core processes, such changes do not occur (Mintzberg, 1983). Most models used to bring about change in organizations depict the change process as a three-part sequence that takes the flawed organization, moves it through a transition stage, and deposits it in the enriched, desired stage (see, e.g., Beckard & Harris, 1987; Beer, 1980; Kanter, 1983; Lewin, 1947; Nadler & Tushman, 1989; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). The organization is diagnosed, the goals of the change effort are considered, and strategies are developed for moving the organization from “here to there” through the application of external incentives, forces, or pressures. These strategies may include communication, training, participation, negotiation, and coercion and are applied to individuals targeted for change (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). The idea is that if one strategy fails, one can simply up the ante to the next strategy until one works. Sources of resistance to change have also been identified—these include fear of the unknown, disruption of routine, loss of control, loss of face, loss of existing benefits, changes in organizations’“personal compacts” with employees, threat to power and/or security, and so forth (Kanter, 1985; McShane & Von Glinow, 1997; Strebel, 1996). Many of these frameworks, however, overlook the actual process of working through resistance to change—which, in a professional bureaucracy, is key to whether change occurs.2 This neglected area was identified by organizational change scholars Robert Tannenbaum and Robert Hanna who, after an investigation of the topic, stated that “very little, if any, attention has been given to the working through of the potent needs of human systems to hold on to the existing order—to that which is—and to

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avoid the powerful feelings that changed circumstances can trigger” (Tannenbaum & Hanna, 1985, p. 99). Deeply felt experiences such as shock, frustration, anger, helplessness, and depression, they conclude, have been “completely ignored”—except possibly at a relatively superficial level called “resistance to change.” The difficulty of overcoming resistance to change may be the reason why efforts to bring about change in professional bureaucracies such as universities, hospitals, and law enforcement are often described as slow, messy, chaotic, and, often, unsuccessful (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972; Greene, 2000; Lindblom, 1959; Rowley, Lujan, & Dolence, 1997; Wilms, Schmidt, & Norman, 2000; Wilson, 1989). This article analyzes the process of working through resistance to change in a professional bureaucracy—namely, the physics department of a large, public research university in the southwest. Faced with fundamental changes in its environment, the department had to undergo necessary changes in its core processes of teaching and research to survive. Initially, many professors resisted the changes, but over time, significant changes in the department’s core processes and strategic direction occurred. Analysis of interview data collected from professors over a 2-year period revealed that the department’s change process closely resembled that of death and dying identified by Kubler-Ross (1969) in her study of terminally ill patients. Like the terminally ill, the faculty underwent periods of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Viewing the process of change in a professional bureaucracy as a process of death and dying may broaden understanding of resistance to change in these unique types of organizations and can be of assistance to academicians and practitioners as they work with professionals undergoing the process of working through resistance to change. Stages of Death and Dying

The process of mourning has been described as progressing through a number of distinct phases, or stages (e.g., Averill, 1968; Bowlby, 1980; Bowlby & Parkes, 1970; Engel, 1964; Pincus, 1976; Pollock, 1961; Raphael, 1983; Seitz & Warrwick, 1974; Volkan, 1981). The most widely quoted of these “stage theories” is that of Kubler-Ross (1969), who found that terminally ill patients progress through five distinct stages.3 The first stage is denial, or the “no, it can’t be true” stage. The patient may deny that the illness is really happening to them and act as if nothing is wrong. Then comes the anger stage, during which the patient experiences deep emotions such as rage, frustration, and resentment, which often are directed at others. Third is the bargaining stage, during which the individual acknowledges the illness but attempts to negotiate more time to engage in desired activities or to complete unfinished business. In a sense, bargaining is an attempt to delay the inevitable. Then depression sets in, during which the patient becomes melancholy, somber, and dejected. During this time, the patient may mourn things (including relationships) that are already lost, as well as things that may be lost in the future. Finally, individuals reach the stage of acceptance during which time they no longer fight the inevitable and prepare for their impending death. During this time, they also experience a sense of inner and outer peace (Kubler-Ross, 1969).

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Overview of the Site

The Department of Physics occupies an older building on the campus of a large public research university. The department was established in the 1930s and is ranked in the top 20 physics departments nationwide according to the National Research Council. It is home to approximately 60 ladder faculty members who represent fields such as plasma physics, condensed matter, and particle physics. More than 100 students are enrolled in the doctoral program and nearly 150 are working toward a bachelor’s degree in physics. The department also provides so-called service courses to 2,000 undergraduates majoring in engineering, mathematics, chemistry, and the life sciences who must take physics as part of their degrees. Approximately half of the students who take service courses are premed students. The Physicist as Professional

Physicists are quintessential professionals—highly trained, deeply committed to their work, and autonomous. Many faculty members in the Department of Physics describe their passion for science as an early calling that started in childhood or adolescence. One professor, for instance, said he had wanted to study physics ever since becoming fascinated with experiments in high school, whereas another described a lifelong “inner compulsion” to become a physicist. Physicists then spend long years earning a Ph.D., a primary component of which is working as an apprentice alongside senior scientists on large research projects investigating pressing problems in the field. The Ph.D. is often followed by additional years in postdoctoral posts, conducting laboratory experiments or advancing theory. Most physicists aim for a faculty position at a top-tier university where they prepare for a life of teaching graduates and/or undergraduates, pursuing their research goals, and providing service to their departments, universities, professions, and communities. Not surprisingly, most physics professors say they love their work. They cherish the freedom to pursue scientific questions that interest them—a freedom they know they would not find at a national or industrial laboratory. One faculty member admitted, “It’s fun, let’s face it. If you want a career in life that is as near to play, I think, as anything you can imagine, being a professor is it.” Another added, “This is one of the few ways that you can actually spend your life studying and working on the subject you love and someone will pay you for it!” Most professors say the nonmonetary benefits outweigh the higher pay scales they might earn on the outside. One professor said, “I could go out and work in industry where I could double my salary. But then I wouldn’t have the same level of satisfaction.” In addition to research, physicists have considerable freedom in choosing what they teach. Each year, they typically choose from a list of courses that changes little from year to year. The physics curriculum is well established, and preparing to teach is somewhat routine. Most professors use standard textbooks, many of which have been used for decades.

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Pressures for Change

Over the past decade, a number of major environmental and institutional changes have exerted pressure on the Department of Physics to make fundamental changes in both its core processes of research and teaching. Decline in federal funding. Between 1973 and 1996, due in large part to the end of the Cold War, the share of federal funding devoted to physics declined by 26% (National Science Foundation, 1998, p. 3). At the same time, competition for federal dollars intensified as many excess Ph.D.s produced during the Cold War began applying for funding. As a result, research grants became smaller and more difficult to obtain. Professors used to receiving grants of $150,000 or $200,000 from agencies such as the National Science Foundation suddenly found themselves scrambling to obtain grants of $50,000. Growth of the life sciences. Although the proportion of federal funding allocated to physics shrank, the proportion earmarked for the medical sciences grew—by 18% between 1973 and 1998 (National Science Foundation, 1998, p. 3). Paralleling the growth of the field, increasing numbers of undergraduates began entering the life sciences (National Science Board, 2000, p. 34). Physics professors watched as many of their brightest physics students defected to the biological sciences—to fields such as microbiology and neurobiology, where many of the new discoveries were to be made. Decline in job openings. Over the past decade, job openings for new physics Ph.D.s have become scarce. In 1995, only 5% of new doctorates secured ladder-faculty positions within the first 3 years of completing their degrees (National Science Board, 2000, p. 38). According to the Department Chair’s estimate, for each opening in a physics department in a major university, there were approximately 200 applicants. Jobs for Ph.D.s in the defense industry—which traditionally absorbed the spillover of physicists—declined as well with the end of the Cold War. Decline in enrollments. As news of tight job conditions and reduced salaries spread, applications to the physics programs declined dramatically. Between 1992 and 1997, the number of applicants to the Ph.D. program dropped by 36%, whereas the number of applicants to the undergraduate program fell by 26%. Nationally, the number of college graduates with physics degrees fell from a high of about 5,000 to 3,800—the lowest in four decades (American Institute of Physics, 1997, p. 1). Rising customer demands. In the late 1990s, the department began feeling pressure from its primary internal customer, the medical school, which had discovered that its premed students were unhappy with the physics courses taught by the Physics Department. The service courses, which compose more than 80% of the courses offered by the department, were viewed by premed students as overly purist and irrelevant. Unless the Physics Department tailored the courses to the life sciences, the medical school threatened, the school would teach physics to premed students themselves.

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METHOD The study was part of a larger study funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation that used an open-systems perspective to understand how a large, public research university was responding to changes in its environment.4 The Department of Physics was chosen as a research site because it represented an exemplary case of a professional bureaucracy that had to undergo significant change to survive. Permission to conduct the study and access to the department was granted to a team of university researchers (which included the author) by the department chair, and was sanctioned by the university top administration. Over a 2-year period in the late 1990s, semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 40 of the approximately 60 ladder faculty in the department. The interviews were conducted at regular intervals and coincided with a critical period in the department’s evolution that began just before the interviews began and finished soon after. Most individuals were interviewed once, whereas three key informants (e.g., the department chair and respected elders with long-term views) were interviewed two or three times over the course of the 2-year period. Interview questions focused on professors’ perceptions of changes in the department’s external environment and their impact (if any) on the department as well as on professors’ core processes of teaching and research (see Appendix A). In addition to the interviews, group-level data was collected at several informal feedback sessions during which faculty were invited to hear and comment on the larger study’s emerging findings. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and entered into a computer software program for qualitative data analysis called NUD*IST.5 Included with the transcripts were memos written to document aspects of professors’ verbal behavior (e.g., intonation, volume, pitch of speech) and nonverbal behavior (e.g., facial expression, gestures, body positioning) that indicated their emotional states. Following accepted procedures for qualitative data analysis, a set of codes then was developed to enable the sorting of exemplars (chunks of text) into categories (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Specifically, codes were developed to represent (a) individuals’ job classification, (b) the individuals themselves, (c) stage of the study, (d) the Kubler-Ross (1969) stage, and (e) type of exemplar (see Appendix B). Transcripts then were analyzed to discern the Kubler-Ross (1969) stage represented by each individual, using the memos to help make the correct diagnosis.6 In the few cases in which individuals appeared to occupy two stages at once (e.g., bargaining and anger), the stage that appeared to predominate was chosen. Using NUD*IST, the fieldnotes that represented the codes were then electronically tagged for later retrieval. The code representing the Kubler-Ross (1969) stage was then cross-tabulated by the code representing the phase of the study to determine the number of interviewees occupying each Kubler-Ross (1969) stage at any given phase—and thereby to test the Kubler-Ross (1969) hypothesis. The results of this cross-tabulation were further cross-tabulated with the code for type of exemplar, which produced quotes that were used as evidence of the stages in writing up the results. Knowing the origin of the exemplar made it possible to prevent individuals from being counted more than once and to avoid overreliance on exemplars from any given interviewee in the write-up.

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RESULTS Findings from the interviews suggested that both individuals and the organization as a whole moved through the process of change roughly in the sequence outlined by Kubler-Ross (1969). Physics Faculty’s Stages of Death and Dying

Changes in the core processes of research and teaching were clearly necessary for the department to regain its health in the face of pressures from the environment. Yet, these changes were adamantly resisted by faculty. Over time, physicists came to accept that change was necessary and made significant modifications to the department’s teaching and research activities. The process was slow and painful, however, and clearly illustrated all stages in the process of death and dying. Denial

During initial interviews with the physics professors, many avoid talking about the department’s situation and needed changes, instead preferring to reminisce about the era of “big science” when physics reigned as the dominant science. A physicist recalled, “The federal government poured millions of dollars into basic research in the interest of the nation’s defense, creating an unprecedented demand for physicists.” Support for physics soared with the race to beat the Soviets into space—when, according to one professor, “People said we have to support science at almost any cost.” Physics became so dominant on university campuses in the 1950s, professors boasted, that academics in other fields were said to have “physics envy.” A professor explained: Physicists were the preeminent people on campus because of this tremendous triumph over relativity and quantum mechanics and then nuclear physics and solid-state physics. Physics seemed so successful at explaining the universe, and the intellectual force of the subject was so dominating, that people in other subjects had “physics envy.” They wanted their subject to be revered in a similar way.

Physicists were so successful, according to professors, that they assumed top leadership positions both in science and industry. One professor said, “Physicists who had been involved with radar and nuclear energy went on to become the movers and shakers in all sorts of areas. They became presidents of universities and CEOs of companies. TRW was started by a physicist!” Physicists also initially refused to acknowledge the sharp drop in the number of graduate and undergraduate applications to the physics program. To them, this suggested the unthinkable—that the major was less popular than it had been in the past. When initially confronted with data gathered by administrators that proved this trend, they insisted that physics was “still the most powerful education” and the “best preparation for a career in the sciences.” During one department meeting, for example, a professor insisted, “Physics is the best way to teach students how to solve problems because you learn analysis at a very deep level; you learn engineering, experimental techniques, and computation.” Despite complaints from students that courses were

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outdated, professors defended their use of syllabi and textbooks that had been used for decades. One professor explained, “That syllabus was written probably 25 years ago. There’s no reason to change it. Physics doesn’t move that quickly. There are the real facts, and those real facts you have to know.” Those who did acknowledge the drop in undergraduate enrollments maintained that students simply failed to recognize the opportunities that a physics major offered. One said, There’s an awful lot yet to be discovered regarding the structure of the universe and the structure of matter, etc. But it’s not clear to me that it’s obvious to the present generation. It used to be that the best and the brightest went into physics. But that’s not happening now.

Physicists also resisted acknowledging that the jobs for new physics Ph.D.s had declined. Professors maintained that physics makes graduate students especially flexible, which makes them more valuable to companies. One said, Companies found that engineering graduates last five years, at which time they become obsolete. The physics Ph.D.s are trained to be more flexible, open minded, [and to] take on different things. Companies have realized that although our graduates are not narrowly trained, they are much more flexible for the long term, more valuable over longer periods of time.

As proof, they pointed to the fact that a handful of new Ph.D.s had gotten jobs on Wall Street, suggesting that there was no end to the range of career possibilities. One explained, Our graduates have the mathematical knowledge that is needed for certain specialized things like trading and pricing derivatives. Or they work as programmers for brokerage firms. They not only have the skills to program, but the analytical skills to formulate the problem. That makes them well suited to a variety of careers.

Anger

As data proving that the environment had changed became readily available, gradually faculty acknowledged physics had lost the prestige of its halcyon years. For some physicists, this realization turned to anger at the public, who they claimed “quickly forgot” about the contribution that physics had made to the nation. Many said they felt blamed by society because the “promise of technology” had not come true. One professor explained, In the 1950s, everyone thought that big science was going to produce this wonderful society in which we’d have lots of free time and everyone would have wonderful care and this, that and the other. Somehow that promise never quite worked out. The poor are still poor and not doing so well. And somehow that reflects negatively on us.

Some physicists complained that they were being painted as scapegoats for society’s ills. One professor said, “There is this social cynicism against physics. People assume that the problems we now face have been brought about by technology, and there seems to be a feeling that big science is responsible for the mess we’re in!”

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Professors also expressed anger at the effect of society’s attitude on students. One explained, “We see fewer students who are interested in coming to physics—that’s part of this anti-science feeling.” The field has been “under attack,” according to the Department Chair, since the end of the Cold War. He explained, Every student who goes to high school is told that there are shrinking budgets with the cancellation of the superconducting supercollider, and the decline of Bell Labs and AT&T as major industrial enterprises that hire a lot of Ph.D. physicists. In Southern California, of course, there is the virtual collapse of the aerospace industry. Students know this, and they vote with their feet.

Many felt angry at society and the federal government for what they perceived as a decline in willingness to fund basic research. Although physicists acknowledged the growing cost of research due to the need for far more sophisticated and expensive technology than ever before, they believed the investment was a necessary one and felt frustrated by the reduced financial support. The result, they said, was a very “painful period filled with tremendous turmoil.” A theoretical plasma physicist explained, We have made great advances, but the next advance requires a lot of money. At the same time, the amount of funding available from the federal government has taken a sharp decrease. So we’re trying to push frontiers in the subject, but we can’t do it because there is less and less money!

Physicists were also angered at the notion of tailoring physics courses to the life sciences to appease the medical school. This resistance surfaced pointedly after several innovative professors took a stab at such a course, which they called biophysics. The new course was rejected by some professors on the grounds that it departed too radically from “pure” physics. One dismayed professor explained, Biophysics is not the physicists’ conception of physics. It’s biophysics! They’re proposing that no principles or laws of physics be taught unless they are relevant to the biophysics of the human body. There are some very important concepts in physics—like Faraday’s Law, for instance—that are not important for the body. They would not even be touched in this class! These are major, major changes. Physicists themselves are divided over whether it should be taught this way or not.

Bargaining

As faculty came to realize that changes to their research and teaching activities were necessary, a period of bargaining set in as professors attempted to delay the inevitable.7 Rather than shift the focus of their research to growing fields, professors instead tried to buy time by writing more proposals than ever before to piece together funds for their research. One said, “For every 10 proposals I write, I get one or two funded, as compared to a ratio of 2 to 1 several years ago. So I spend a huge amount of time writing proposals . . . you have to beat the bushes very hard to get support.” Professors also experimented with partnerships with industry as a means to bring in additional revenue. Although this strategy succeeded in pockets, it failed overall because of philosophical differences between academia and the private sector. One professor who was considered an opinion leader explained,

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Industry is driven by financial objectives. Most companies are not interested in having people around who take a broader view of what research is all about. They come to you with a specific question and when they get the answer, they go away. They’re not really interested in a long-term relationship.

Some professors felt quite adamant about avoiding partnerships with the private sector because, as one said, “The short-term philosophy that permeates industry would infect the university like a virus.” Another bargaining approach was to merge with the Department of Astronomy. Although the result of an administrative directive, department leaders also hoped the merger would further progress in new fields such as astroparticle physics and cosmology by encouraging faculty from the two disciplines to work together. An additional expectation was that some of astronomy’s popularity would rub off onto physics and make it more appealing to students. A professor explained, Everybody likes astronomy because you can see it. Much of physics is invisible. Whether you’re talking about quarks or bosons, you can’t see them with the naked eye. But in astronomy, everybody knows it’s there and it’s a source of awe and wonderment and it’s in everybody’s soul at some level.

Other bargaining tactics were employed to increase enrollments in the Ph.D. program. As part of a new recruiting campaign launched by the department, faculty began personally calling prospective students at home. When this strategy failed, professors toyed with the idea of lowering standards for admission. This idea was ultimately rejected, however, because faculty could not bear the thought of “dumbing down” the program. Depression

When bargaining proved less successful than hoped, reality began to set in, throwing faculty into a mild state of depression and gloom. A number of professors lamented that the most pressing problems in physics had already been solved. One elder professor said somberly, “The easy plums were gathered long ago. There are no longer physics subjects full of discoveries.” Another said, “The bloom is off the rose. Physics has had a great run for the last 50 years, and I don’t see the next 50 years as being anything like it.” Yet another senior professor said dejectedly, “Let’s face it. The era of big science is over.” Others were demoralized by the perception that Congress was no longer willing to fund the sophisticated technology needed to solve problems in basic science. This message came through pointedly with the 1993 cancellation of the superconducting supercollider project in Texas. One high-energy physicist explained, The death of the superconducting supercollider is a major event in the sociology of physics and looms over us like a giant volcano. It symbolizes that the era after the Cold War is one in which legislators and policy makers in general say, “Well, we can no longer afford things like the superconducting supercollider. We need to have a practical orientation to what we are doing.”

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Making matters worse was the realization that because partnerships with industry would not work, the federal government was the only viable source of funds for basic research. With federal funds declining, the implications painted a gloomy future. One professor explained, In basic research, the fruit may fall very far from the tree, outside the boundary of any particular company or any particular industry. That’s why the only sensible way to support basic research is through the federal government. But if basic research is not supported by the government, it won’t be supported by anyone.

Faculty also felt glum about the impact of the declining job market on the career prospects for their graduates, who suddenly found jobs harder to come by. One faculty member explained, Word got out that [physics is] not as prestigious an area anymore, that it’s much harder to find a job, that salaries have gone, and that people are stuck in sort of ghetto situations of postdoc after postdoc.

Declining federal funds translated into administrative cuts as well, due to a new federal directive that made it much harder for universities to charge secretarial and other support staff to government contracts. The result was several waves of layoffs, which left faculty overworked and demoralized. One explained, We’re down to one secretarial person to support six professors and a lot of postdocs and students . . . the infrastructure has disappeared and we are close to the breaking point. We haven’t gotten to the bottom, but we’re close to it. A lot of people are questioning whether it’s worth continuing here. They are getting really frustrated.

Acceptance

Gradually, signs that faculty members in the department were accepting the changes began to appear. The first step occurred when professors acknowledged that the “era of physics” was over. One professor commented, “The 20th century was the century of physics. But it’s pretty clear that the 21st century will be the century of biology.” Another said, The biological sciences are growing fast. Physics is further along, it’s more mature. The physical sciences used to be where the best and brightest ideas took place. But it has been a long time since we had Albert Einstein, the advent of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War.

This realization was expedited by the observation that many talented students began selecting majors in the biological sciences over physics. One professor explained, “There is a psychological shift in that my brightest undergraduates want to go more toward biological fields—brain research, microbiology.” As reality sank in, faculty slowly began to acknowledge that physics was no longer growing, and that without a new area of research to attract funding and students, the department’s long-term viability was at stake. One professor said,

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We can no longer ignore the fact that the role that basic research plays in society is under reevaluation. Physics is redefining itself right now in general. All subfields are feeling the pressure to do that. So we need to decide what direction we’re going in, for our own survival.

Systemic change was necessary, and the department began to think strategically for the first time in history. Along with this came the realization that the department faced competition from other physics departments throughout the nation. Informal meetings were called on a weekly basis to explore alternative paths. The Chair explained: For the first time ever, the Department is consciously trying to understand where it wants to go. As you look throughout the nation, you see institutions of higher learning that are powerful players. It’s a very competitive environment. We’ve got to decide whether we want to compete head-on with those or whether we want to try to develop areas of expertise which are complementary but nevertheless stake out a unique identity for ourselves in this consortium of powerful universities.

The process was anything but straightforward, however. One professor explained how the investigation into possible strategies was slow and deliberate because of the enormous implications. One professor explained, I go to meetings where we discuss whether it’s a sensible thing to go into biophysics or astrophysics, or to do it in a big way or in a small way, or whether we should still study nuclear physics or whether that’s an old-fashioned subject, a variety of things like that. Those are very, very difficult questions. Those are some decisions which I think we don’t want to rush into.

Eventually, in the late 1990s, the department decided to enter biophysics to capitalize on the growth of the life sciences. One said, “With other physics branches fading out, we had to find something that was actually growing.” Entering biophysics would require cooperating with the medical school because proposals for research in biomedicine usually required having an M.D. on the research team. Cooperation was difficult, however, given the so-called disciplinary silos that separated the College of Letters & Science (which housed physics) and the medical school. Several faculty members suggested that the Department Chair’s efforts to bridge the gap would be moot and that help would be needed from the Chancellor’s level. One professor explained, Let’s take this foray into biophysics. It would make a world of difference if the high-level administration would create a social structure to allow this to happen. If the Department Chair tries to bring people together, forget it. But if the Chancellor came down and took the provosts of the medical school and the College of Letters & Science, put them in a room and said, “I want the college and the medical school to work together and here’s a slate of ideas I want to see enacted,” things would happen. That’s where high-level administration matters. When that’s not there, there is very little impetus for faculty to break down the walls that separate them.

After convincing high-level administrators that biophysics held substantial potential, the department received the desired assistance from the Vice Chancellor for Research, who called a meeting between the two provosts that helped to jumpstart a joint program. But then the department faced another obstacle: Despite coaxing on the

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part of the Chair and several attempts at crossing over, most faculty members were either unwilling or unable to shift their research to biophysics. The few who tried to upgrade their skills were not successful—a message that was difficult and risky to convey because it might bruise a colleague’s ego. One faculty member explained, The problems is, if somebody [trying to retool] is doing good work, do you encourage good work or do you say no, let’s shoot for somebody who is absolutely superb? That’s a tough decision to make because you sit and work with colleagues all the time—it’s like telling your brother or sister, I’m sorry, but you just don’t measure up.

After months of deliberation, the department realized its only option was to hire from outside. After a 2-year search, the department successfully recruited its first biophysicist, with two more soon to follow. A year later, following the lead of a senior professor, the department had successfully established a major research center with the school of medicine and had enough biophysics proposals funded to capture 60% more revenue than in 1996. Physicists also began to acknowledge that traditional physics had declined in popularity, both among students and the society at large. Part of the reason, they explained, was the increasingly esoteric and abstract nature of the field. One professor explained, When you talk about elementary particles which are evanescent, last a quadrillionth of a second, disappear in flashes, and have no properties that relate to the things we know, that’s very difficult. Whether we deal with time frames or energies, we deal with scales that are incredibly short or very long—billions of years or billionths of a second! It’s very difficult for others to encompass those things.

But the main reason for the decline in popularity, at least among students, was that textbooks had changed little in decades. One professor said, “If you look at a modern physics book, it contains the same stuff that it did 50 years ago!” Another acknowledged, Most students I know are bored with physics. They can’t wait to get out of it. They like topics such as the origin of life, the way the universe formed—the glamorous things. But they hate Newton’s laws and those pulleys—all the crap you have to do in sophomore physics. Frankly, those things are boring. They go back 200 to 300 years.

Another critical realization, reached for the first time after faculty were shown data collected by the admissions office, was that very few undergraduate majors pursued the field. The Chair explained the wakeup call, “We finally had to face the fact that at the undergraduate level, 80% of our physics majors go off and do something else than go to graduate school in physics.” As a result, changes were made to the undergraduate major’s elective requirements to allow students to take more nonphysics electives. The Chair explained, We had locked up courses to the degree that students didn’t have time to take anything else. So we tore up the plan we had for their senior year, which used to be only physics-based electives, and said

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students could create their own plan that made sense. Now they can go off to take a coherent curriculum in another department, and we are happy to accept it.

Changes were also necessary in the physics service courses that the department offered to nonphysics majors. Prompted by the medical school’s threat, professors finally agreed to go through with courses tailored for the life sciences. One year later, the Chair described the progress: We finally realized that teaching students how balls roll down planes was not what they were interested in if they were going into the life sciences. So we designed an entirely new curriculum that teaches physics that life scientists want to know—about muscles, charges in and out of cells, etc. We’ve written new texts, and are trying out new experiments in our labs.

Finally, faculty members also accepted that attracting more Ph.D. students would require updating the graduate degree program as well. One professor explained, We had a view of graduate education developed in the 1930s and 1940s as a way of satisfying demand for technically trained people in the subject. The problem facing the department today is how to change what we do, given the market forces, which today are very different.

Progression of Faculty Members Interviewed Repeatedly

Interviews conducted repeatedly with three department leaders also were found to support the Kubler-Ross (1969) progression overall.8 For example, as described earlier, at the outset of the study, the Department Chair exhibited anger when he argued that the field of physics has been “under attack” since the end of the Cold War. A year later, the Chair appeared to have accepted the changes as he enthusiastically described his faculty’s efforts to figure out their department’s competitive niche. Similarly, like other professors, one respected senior physicist was attempting to bargain by partnering with outside industry when interviewed early on in the study. But by the end, he had concluded that this strategy was futile and was instead focusing his energy on establishing a joint research center with the medical school. Finally, another senior professor who appeared depressed, lamenting that the “era of big science is over” near the middle of the study, was by the end actively supporting the department’s efforts to recruit an expert in biophysics. Summary of the Progression

The progression of the 40 individuals interviewed over the course of the study is summarized in Figure 1. As shown in the figure, both the individuals interviewed repeatedly and the organization as a whole were found to move through the mourning process in the sequence outlined by Kubler-Ross (1969). That is, during the first 6 months, the modal (most frequent) response was denial (6/10); during the second 6 months, it was anger (5/9); during the third 6 months, it was depression (5/10), and during the fourth 6 months, it was acceptance (5/8).

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Stage of the Study K-R Stage

1 (0-6 months)

2 (7-12 months)

3 (13-18 months)

✚

Acceptance Depression

✚ ✚✚ ✚

Bargaining Anger

4 (19-24 months)

✚ ✚

Denial = individuals interviewed once (37 total)

✚ FIGURE 1:

= individuals interviewed repeatedly (3 total—Connected lines represent one individual)

Progression of Faculty Through Kubler-Ross (1969) Stages Over Time

DISCUSSION This study began with the intent to better understand the process of working through resistance to change in a professional bureaucracy—in which highly trained and autonomous professionals, rather than administrators, largely control the core processes. Because it is based on a single case, the study’s findings naturally are limited in their generalizability. It is possible that the process of change in other types of professional bureaucracies (e.g., hospitals and consulting firms), let alone other academic departments, may differ. Findings from this study, however, suggest that the process of change experienced by the department in response to a crisis that threatened its survival resembles the process of death and dying experienced by terminally ill patients as they prepare for their lives to end (Kubler-Ross, 1969). That is, the department and its members were found to progress through five distinct stages that included denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. The result was a form of organizational rebirth and a new strategic direction that positioned the department to capitalize on an area of growth, thereby providing the opportunity to recoup the health and vitality of bygone years.

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Levels of Analysis

The reader will note that this study entailed two levels of analysis—the individual and the group (i.e., department). Although changes at the level of the individual stimulated this investigation, even more data was gathered regarding change at the level of the department. The change processes at each of these levels will be discussed in the following sections. Individual-Level Change Processes

Insight into the change process experienced by the individuals who progressed through the Kubler-Ross (1969) stages can be gained by examining the process of mourning from a psychoanalytic perspective. A key difference, of course, between terminally ill patients and professionals is that professionals are not really dying. Yet when asked to make fundamental changes in activities about which they are passionate, it can be argued that a part of them is dying—and that this loss needs to be mourned. This analogy is consistent with Freud’s (1917, p. 164) proposition, first put forth in “Mourning and Melancholia,” that the mourning process will be invoked on the loss of any “object” that is loved—and that although this loved object is regularly a person, it could also be “some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as fatherland, liberty, an ideal, and so on.” For the physicists, their object of love was multifaceted and included the past prestige and stature of their field, the freedom to pursue their research specialties, and to teach the courses they desired.9 According to psychoanalytic theory, working through the loss would have required physicists to undergo a period of “grief work,” which refers to the process by which individuals withdraw or disengage their emotional bonds with the “deceased” so that a new identity in which the deceased is absent can be built (Freud, 1917; Lindemann, 1944). Implicit in the concept of grief work is that there are no shortcuts—the process is long, difficult, and painful and requires actively confronting the thoughts and emotions surrounding the loss. The process of grieving, according to some psychoanalysts, would not have been complete until physicists accomplished certain “tasks” associated with mourning (Lindemann, 1944; Parkes & Weiss, 1983; Worden, 1981). First, they would have had to accept the reality of the loss at an intellectual level (e.g., develop a satisfactory account of what happened). Second, they would have had to accept the loss emotionally, signs of which would include the ability to speak about the deceased positively rather than painfully. Third, they would have had to adjust to a new environment in which the deceased was absent, which could require developing new skills and abilities. Finally, they would have had to reinvest in new relationships (e.g., with people, ideas, or activities).10 Judging by their articulate accounts of the past and their fond recollections of the days of big science, most professors accomplished the first two tasks. The second two—adjusting to a new environment (learning new skills) and reinvesting in new relationships—were difficult for some physicists, although the department as a

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whole accomplished these (e.g., by hiring needed personnel from the outside and by committing to the new research direction). Although both the Kubler-Ross (1969) stages and the task theories describe the process of mourning, the task theories appear to describe the process at a deeper level. Put another way, the Kubler-Ross (1969) stages appear to be the observable manifestations of the tasks. For example, bargaining and denial could be exhibited as one comes to terms with loss at an intellectual level, whereas anger and depression are likely symptomatic of the process one goes through when accepting a loss emotionally. Stage theories such as Kubler-Ross’(1969) view mourning as a holistic process that has a beginning and an end (Archer, 1999). Still in question, however, is what propels people through the stages, preventing them from getting stuck at any stage or caught in an endless loop. It is not clear whether the physicists in this study worked through the stages and/or tasks silently in their own heads or whether they did so by discussing their situations with concerned listeners (e.g., friends or spouses). It is entirely possible, for instance, that the interviews conducted as part of this study helped physicists’ journey through the stages by encouraging them to ponder pressures facing the department and to consider actions that would be necessary to help their organization survive. Those insights may have made their way back into the group, aiding departmentlevel change in turn. Either way (regardless of whether dialogue occurred), physicists may have been propelled through the stages and tasks by forces explained only by evolutionary psychology (Archer, 1999). Grief, in and of itself, is maladaptive because it detracts from an individual’s ability to function. And the longer it continues, the more maladaptive it becomes. Thus, individuals may eventually progress through the stages simply to survive. This view is supported by noted psychoanalyst George Pollock (1977, p. 16), who explained that mourning is an “adaptational process having sequential phases and stages, phylogenetically evolved” over time. Group-Level Change Processes

Although the repeated interviews provided evidence of individual-level change, an even stronger case can be made for change that occurred at the level of the department. For example, by the conclusion of the study, the department had merged with astronomy, decided to enter biophysics (hiring three biophysicists), established a jointventure with the medical school, and redesigned its physics curriculum to better serve both its own students and those of the medical school. Together, these changes added up to a rebirth for the department of physics—providing an avenue, professors hoped, not only to survive but possibly regain some of the prosperity and pride of bygone years. Partial evidence for group-level change is provided by the pattern produced by aggregating the individual interviews and plotting them over time (see Figure 1). Simply aggregating individual-level behaviors, however, is inadequate evidence for group-level change as groups are conceptualized as being more than simply the sum of

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individuals (Lawrence, 1987; Levinson, 1987). According to Alderfer (1977), a group is a collection of individuals who (a) are interdependent; (b) perceive themselves as a group (e.g., they can distinguish themselves from nonmembers); (c) are recognized by outsiders as a group; (d) have differentiated roles that are accepted by themselves, fellow group members, and outsiders; and (e) either acting alone or in concert with other members, have significantly interdependent relationships with other groups (in which case, it is assumed that in dealing with other groups, group members are acting on behalf of the group). As a result of these characteristics, groups have identities and lives of their own and can exhibit behavior that is distinct from but related to the dynamics of their members (Wells, 1990). In this study, at least two group-level processes were responsible for the department’s rebirth. First, changes at the group level were facilitated by the presence of group leaders (e.g., the Department Chair and respected elders)—who, acting on behalf of the group, negotiated with other groups that were critical to the department’s survival in an effort to improve the department’s situation. For example, the Department Chair negotiated with university administrators regarding the merger with astronomy and solicited assistance from the vice chancellor to help jump-start the foray into biophysics, whereas a respected elder helped establish a joint-venture with the medical school. In these and other instances, the negotiations led to written agreements and structural changes (e.g., cross-disciplinary research projects and a new building) that helped formalize the new intergroup relations and secure the department’s new directions. A second factor that enabled group-level change was the meetings convened by faculty to discuss the department’s future. During these sessions, in what amounted to a group-level working through, physicists shared their thoughts and feelings about the past and current pressures facing the department. Similar discussions took place during feedback sessions during which faculty were invited to hear and comment on the larger study’s emerging findings. Such collective mourning can be enormously productive. Referring to the group level, Pollock (1977, pp. 24-25) wrote, “It is the workingthrough process that constitutes the transitional phase. . . . When the mourning work is accomplished, a creative resolution of the problem or a creative production emerges.” In this case, the opportunity to work through as a group likely heightened the faculty’s awareness of the inevitable and accelerated their search for a solution. Moreover, although they were highly autonomous, physicists knew they depended on each other and on the department for the lifestyles they cherished. The realization that they were bound together in a collective interest created a form of peer pressure that likely persuaded a number of individuals to agree to the changes, even though they might never have done so individually. Helping Professionals Change

We now turn to the practical question, What can be done to help individuals and organizations work through these stages to expedite the organization’s return to health?11 From a psychoanalytic perspective, in a perfect world, professionals would

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be motivated to undergo the equivalent of grief work to confront painful emotions and detach themselves from the deceased, perhaps by working with organization development specialists or by taking advantage of workshops such as those provided by the NTL Institute, which offers sessions on topics such as “Holding On and Letting Go” (NTL Institute, 2001).12 In question, however, is the degree to which professionals are amenable to such work. This would require, according to Hanna (1986), a willingness to assume a “stance of inquiry” (an openness to reconstructing one’s view of life), as well as a willingness to risk and actively experience failure, disappointment, and pain. Often highly analytical and scientific in their training and outlook on life, many professionals may dismiss such processes as too fuzzy and touchy-feely to undertake, or they may consider such activities simply unnecessary. Ultimately, warns Hanna (1986, p. 37), the process cannot be forced as the “the responsibility for meaningful discovery rests squarely on the individual.” Lest managers and change agents throw up their hands, however, there certainly are steps that can be taken to help professionals work through the mourning process. Rosenthal (1985, p. 207) suggests that the mourning process can be “managed” in part by engaging in actions that “mitigate denial” and by confronting organizational members with the reality of the change. As was seen in this study, credible data provided by administrators about the changed environment (e.g., decline in enrollments and job openings for new doctorates) was highly instrumental in helping faculty members overcome their denial. Another idea, suggested by Kubler-Ross (1969), is simply to talk with people about their situations and, in so doing, refer to death (or the loss of a loved “object”) not as an “undiscussable” but as an intrinsic part of life, including it in conversation as naturally as talk about when one is expecting a baby (Kubler-Ross, 1969).13 Such discussions could be held individually or as a group to leverage group dynamics. Whether at the individual or group level, articulating thoughts and feelings in the context of dialogue with others may help bring unconscious thoughts to the surface where they can be dealt with rather than remain lurking below—a concept central to psychoanalysis and grief work. Future Research

This study suggests at least three areas for additional research. First, future studies should focus on the nature of change in other types of professional bureaucracies such as hospitals, consulting firms, and law enforcement to see if the findings discovered here hold true. For instance, have doctors and hospitals gone through Kubler-Ross’s (1969) stages, or any version of individual or group-level working through since the introduction of managed health care, which at times conflicts with doctors’ professional ethics and work practices? Second, investigation should further investigate the relationship between the stage theories and task theories (e.g., by testing the hypothesis proposed in this study), as empirical studies of each have been scant. Finally, future research might explore additional ways that organization development specialists and change agents can use the concepts of grief work and mourning processes to help indi-

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viduals and organizations work through losses, experience rebirth, and move on with their lives.

APPENDIX A Stages of Death, Dying, and Rebirth Study Using Semistructured, Open-Ended Interview Protocol (adapted from the larger study) Background 1. What made you want to become an academic/work in academia?

The Environment and Your Academic Department 2. Have there been any major changes in the environment surrounding your department in recent years? If so, what were they? 3. How have they affected your department? 4. Has your department responded in any way? If so, how?

“Academic Life” 5. How would you describe your work as a faculty member? 6. Is there such thing as a “typical” day?

Your Research 7. What activities are involved in your research? Probe: • How many research projects are you working on right now? • How is your research funded? • What is the outcome of your research? 8. Are there obstacles to doing your research? If so, what are they? 9. Have the changes in the environment (described above) affected your research at all? If so, how?

Your Teaching 10. What activities are involved in your teaching? Probe: • How many classes are you teaching this quarter? • What types of students take your classes? 11. Are there obstacles to doing your teaching? If so, what are they? 12. Have the changes in the environment (described above) affected your teaching at all? If so, how?

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APPENDIX B Codebook for Stages of Death, Dying, and Rebirth Study 1

2

Job Classification 1.1 Faculty 1.2 Staff 1.3 Department Chair Interviewees (initials only) 2.1 A. J. 2.2 A. J. 2.3 A. S. 2.4 E. D. 2.5 E. F. 2.6 E. R. 2.7 G. F. 2.8 G. G. 2.9 G. J. 2.10 H. J. 2.11 H. M. 2.12 I. R. 2.13 L. I. 2.14 M. K. 2.15 N. G. 2.16 O. L. 2.17 P. J. 2.18 P. L. 2.19 P. R. 2.20 R. G. 2.21 R. H. 2.22 R. K. 2.23 R. M. 2.24 R. T. 2.25 R. T. 2.26 S. A. 2.27 S. D. 2.28 S. F. 2.29 S. M. 2.30 S. R. 2.31 S. S. 2.32 S. V. 2.33 T. G. 2.34 T. L. 2.35 T. P. 2.36 T. R. 2.37 U. Y. 2.38 V. T. 2.39 W. E. 2.40 W. S.

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4

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Stage of Study 3.1 0-6 months 3.2 7-12 months 3.3 13-18 months 3.4 19-24 months Kubler-Ross (1969) Stage 4.1 Denial 4.2 Anger 4.3 Bargaining 4.4 Depression 4.5 Acceptance Type of Exemplar 5.1 Descriptive/background information 5.2 Quote

NOTES 1. Mintzberg’s five organizational forms are as follows: the simple structure, the machine bureaucracy, the professional bureaucracy, the divisionalized form, and the adhocracy (Mintzberg, 1983). 2. Although used in this article as a general term, in psychoanalysis, working through is a technical term that, according to the Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, refers to the “process by which a patient in analysis discovers piecemeal over an extended period of time the full implication of some interpretation or insight. Hence, by extension, the process of getting used to a new state of affairs, or of getting over a loss, or painful experience.” According to the dictionary, mourning is an example of working through because it provides the gradual recognition that the “lost object” is no longer available in a variety of contexts in which it was previously a familiar figure (Rycroft, 1995). 3. Inspiration for Kubler-Ross’s work actually came from an earlier version of Bowlby and Parkes’s stage view of grief (Parkes, 1995), but the Kubler-Ross model became more widely known. 4. As an open system, an organization is conceptualized as having one or more feedback loops that provide the entity with information from the environment that allows it to alter its processes while in progress. A “closed” system has no such feedback loops (Scott, 1998). 5. NUD*IST stands for Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing, and is produced by QSR International (www.qsr.com.au/). 6. For example, flailing fists and a raised voice were taken as signs of anger, whereas a sullen face and slumped over, lifeless body was interpreted as depression. 7. Of all Kubler-Ross’s stages, bargaining is least substantiated and most elusive, which might explain why there was less data supporting this stage than all others. 8. Due to the limited number of interviews, it is impossible to determine the exact progression of these individuals. Some studies have suggested, for instance, that the Kubler-Ross (1969) stages are not perfectly clear-cut (Archer, 1999). Rather, they may wax and wane in relation to outside events or a person’s mental state and circumstances. Or, an individual may oscillate for a time back and forth between any two (Bowlby, 1980). Their overall progression, however, as illustrated in Figure 1, supports the Kubler-Ross (1969) hypothesis. 9. Physicists also could have been mourning the loss of meaning in their lives. According to Hanna (1986), meaning is a function of one’s “personal construct system,” which is made up of the following three elements: one’s philosophy of life (which explains one’s purpose and place in the world), one’s personal story (which lays out one’s goals and aspirations), and one’s self concept (which includes one’s traits, abilities, psychology, body image, and so forth, and which determines sense of worth) (Hanna, 1986). With the future of their specialties in question, their egos bruised by the declining popularity of physics, and the

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department’s new strategic direction demanding skills not yet in their repertoire, it is likely that at least two of these physicists’ three elements (personal story and self-concept) were challenged, resulting in a profound loss of meaning that needed to be mourned. 10. The three task theories are very similar; this characterization represents their consolidation. 11. It is first necessary to acknowledge—and try to avoid—the tendency to assume that individuals or groups can simply be hurried or “herded” through the stages (in which case, the “description” would have become the “prescription”). This would deny the individuality of human beings and the need for mourners to have some control in their own healing processes and destiny (Gorle, 2002). 12. Through cognitive exploration, experiential exercises, and journal writing, such workshops aim to provide individuals with the skills and insight to let go. This is accomplished by bringing about heightened awareness of the content and nature of the thing to which they cling, and the opportunity to experience the emotions associated with that clinging. 13. Presumably, this step could be filled by consultants, whose role traditionally has included helping individuals work through resistance to change as part of larger, systemic organizational change efforts.

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