Strategic Leadership: Top Executives and Their Effects on Organizations

This article provides a tool for creating change that produces observable results in complex organizations. Linkage analysis helps managers map, evaluate, and overcome barriers that underlie the organizational improvement paradox. In this paradox, organizational changes are expected to lead to performance benefits for a unit as well as for the firm as a whole, but benefits occur only for the unit. The organizational improvement paradox frustrates change efforts and is the norm in organizational change where the firm has multiple units and levels. Linkage analysis permits managers and change agents to visualize the complex process of change. It details critical change pathways that otherwise go unrecognized and unmanaged. Through two cases, the reader can practice using linkage tools. Linkage analysis primes managers to take critical and widely overlooked steps to produce visible firm-level results.