Vision and Change in Institutional Entrepreneurship: The Transformation from Science to Commercialization

Sheltered for a long time within the public sector environment with high job security and professional research autonomy, defense R&D organizations faced unprecedented challenges when government support was being withdrawn and closure threatening. They needed to be led by a suitable vision in order to implement comprehensive changes to their operations and remain viable. This study explores this constitution of vision as a mechanism of intentional change, a strategic tool to reach the desired future for the organization. Going beyond the current literature, the authors ask to what extent, and how, organizational members reconstruct vision in a way that it can support or detain change, a question of importance for management scholars as well as professional managers in both public and private organizations.

Israel Drori is a Professor on the Faculty of the School of Business at the College of Management, Israel, and a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the Said Business School, Oxford University, and Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University, Florida Atlantic University, and Tsinghua University, China.

Dana Landau is a Senior Lecturer in the school of Management and Economics at the Academic College of Tel Aviv (MTA). She has served as a process consultant to national and multinational Israeli firms, in both business and Governmental sectors. Her main areas of research are Organizational Theory and Culture, Qualitative Research Methods, Organizational Vision and Organizational change.