Dawson, Patrick: Organizational Change as a Nonlinear, Ongoing, Dynamic Process

Patrick Dawson is a contemporary organizational sociologist born in England and now based in Australia. His abiding research interest has focused on “why people do the things that they do.” His research trajectory was positioned by growing up in a working-class family in the industrial Southwest of England and his interests in sociological theory, early urban ethnography, neo-Marxism, and phenomenology. He developed a processual approach to organizational change that promotes the importance of viewing change as a nonlinear dynamic rather than a simple progressive series of causal stages. When first developed, his processual perspective strongly contrasted with the dominance of organization development (OD), contingency, and recipe-type approaches in adopting the view that examining changes as they happen is central to building knowledge about complex change processes. His approach draws attention to commonly overlooked areas in studying the complexity and messiness of change including issues of time and temporality, political process, narratives and sensemaking, and the multiple views and interpretations that all shape and influence change processes. Dawson’s research spans multiple sectors and organizations from heavy industry to human services and is characterized by its strong empirical grounding in seeking to understand change as an ongoing dynamic process using fine-grained, longitudinal, ethnographic investigations. Dawson has established himself as a leading international scholar in management research having published 13 books and over 60 refereed journal articles as well as sitting on various international editorial boards.