NAME: ASENATH MAOBE JOURNAL REVIEW NO. 14 INSTRUCTOR: PROF. SWANZI Introduction A critical review of Beer and Nohria (2000)’s article. “Cracking the Code of Change.” Both authors are professors at the Harvard Business School in Boston. This article appeared in the Harvard Business School Press in October of 2000. The main aim of the study was the realization that organizations need to adapt to change or they will die. Many companies attempt to change in various ways, which include downsizing, restructuring and changing the corporate culture, but they aren’t successful. According to research included in the article, seventy percent of all change initiatives will fail. Why is that? This article suggests leaders must not only understand the process of change, they must “crack the code” of change. Yet again, historically, few researches have been undertaken on change that relates to entrepreneurial companies which are not necessarily large. The authors therefore set to bridge this academic gap. Synopsis The authors’ major points were the emergence of two theories on corporate change – Theory E and Theory O. Theory E is a hard approach and is based on economic value and usually results in economic incentives, layoffs, downsizing and restructuring. Theory O a soft approach, which is based on organizational capability and focuses on developing corporate culture and human capability through individual and organizational learning. This article explores each theory and how it has been implemented on its own. Beer and Nohria (2000) then demonstrate how the theories can be combined to create successful, lasting change. In their methodology, they used a mixed method design including both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative analysis consisted of semi structured interviews and survey comments, the quantitative analysis consisted of survey descriptive statistics and correlation analysis based on survey result from the three companies. In conclusion, Beer and Nohria (2000) have presented lessons we can take away from this article. One of them is companies should not rush to change instead they should try and find a balance between Theory E and O approaches. This is because a combination of the two theories enables a company to achieve a lasting change. The writers recommend the use of the combined theories to other organizations to achieve lasting change. They further realize that it can only be possible with continued monitoring and long-term organization objectives. Another recommendation would be, further research be undertaken involving a larger sample to validate the theories. EVALUATION/ REVIEW In order to examine the two theories of change, Beer and Nohria first needed to research each theory on its own. They studied two companies, both in the paper production, and looked at