The editors of the MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winners of the Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize for the most outstanding SMR article on planned change and organizational development published in Volume 42 (Fall 2000 through Summer 2001).

Peter M. Senge
Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and MIT
and
Goran Carstedt
Former Volvo and IKEA senior executive

 

"Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution"

Winter 2001, Volume 42, Number 2, pp. 24–38

Reprint 4222

 

The panel of judges, composed of MIT Sloan School of Management professors, was unanimous in its choice of Peter M. Senge and Goran Carstedt's expansive and forward-looking synthesis of the evolutionary factors that will be necessary to create the beginnings of a truly post-industrial age. The "next revolution," say the authors, will require "fundamental shifts in how the economic system affects the larger systems within which it resides — namely society and nature." They then proceed to explicate, in clear and far-reaching ways, how that might occur.

"This article is bold, challenging, and innovative … articulating an important mandate for 21st-century organizations," commented Prof. Wanda J. Orlikowski. "It is at once inspirational and practical." Prof. John Van Maanen praised the article's "sense of doable realism." And Prof. Edgar H. Schein was "impressed by the assertion of a new role for business relative to society as a whole, drawing together examples from companies such as BP and IKEA." Schein went on to note how apt this year's winning article is: "One of the article's co-authors is an executive who thinks clearly and intelligently about these issues and represents an international dimension, which Prof. Beckhard cared about deeply."

 

Richard Beckhard

One of the founders and architects of the field of organizational development, Prof. Richard Beckhard was a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty for more than 20 years. A longtime friend of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Beckhard was known for his efforts to help organizations function in a more humane and high-performing manner, and to empower people to be agents of change.

His books include "Organizational Development Strategies and Models," "Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change," "Changing the Essence: The Art of Creating and Leading Fundamental Change in Organizations," and his autobiography, "Agent of Change: My Life, My Practice."

The prize was established in 1984 by the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Business upon Prof. Beckhardís retirement and renamed the Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize after his death on 28 December 1999.

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