{"id":8962,"date":"2026-06-16T10:18:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/?p=8962"},"modified":"2026-06-16T14:19:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T14:19:03","slug":"royston-greenwood-the-hockey-fan-who-understood-how-teams-change-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/royston-greenwood-the-hockey-fan-who-understood-how-teams-change-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Royston Greenwood: The Hockey Fan Who Understood How Teams Change at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

The late Academy of Management Scholar Royston Greenwood<\/a> of the University of Alberta School of Business was a sports fan who used discussions of hockey coaches\u2019 decisions to illustrate lessons in mentorship and leadership. One of the world\u2019s most highly cited researchers in the field of management and organization studies, he is best known for his research into the dynamics of group change.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Alan Meyer<\/a> of the University of Oregon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two ideas stand out as particularly relevant to leaders navigating change right now, Meyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, organizations don’t resist change because people are stubborn\u2014they resist because change threatens the \u2018interpretive scheme\u2019 that makes the current arrangement feel coherent and legitimate,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cWhen a reorg fails, it\u2019s often not because the new structure is poorly designed on paper\u2014it\u2019s because nobody has done the harder work of shifting the underlying beliefs about what the organization is for and how things should be done. The actionable lesson is this: Before redesigning structure, diagnose the meaning system that the current structure expresses. Change efforts that only rearrange boxes on an org chart, without addressing the values and assumptions those boxes encode, tend to revert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second, Greenwood and his colleague Academy of Management Scholar C. R. \u201cBob\u201d Hinings<\/a> of the University of Alberta showed that organizational designs aren\u2019t neutral\u2014they reflect and protect the interests of whoever benefits from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why change so often stalls: The people with the most power to block reorientation are usually the people the existing design favors,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cFor leaders, this means anticipating that resistance to change is going to cluster around whoever has the most to lose under the new arrangement.<\/p>\n

\u201cA third, more personal lesson, comes from how Royston himself worked: He treated rigorous critique as a form of generosity\u2014an investment in someone\u2019s development rather than a judgment of their worth,\u201d he said. \u201cFor managers and mentors, that\u2019s a practical model for giving tough feedback in a way that builds people up instead of shutting them down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenwood was one of the architects of modern thinking about organizational and institutional change\u2014but Meyer said that his deepest legacy may be less about his publications than about how he worked and who he mentored and brought along with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcademically, Royston\u2014along with his 53-year collaborator and close friend Bob Hinings\u2014developed foundational ideas about why organizations settle into particular configurations and how they sometimes break free of them,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cTheir work showed that organizations aren\u2019t just structures\u2014they\u2019re held together by shared belief systems\u2014\u2018interpretive schemes\u2019\u2014that link strategy, structure, and process.<\/p>\n

\u201cChange, as Royston saw it, isn\u2019t just about redesigning an org chart; it requires dislodging the underlying logic that makes the old structure feel natural and inevitable to the people inside it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut beyond the ideas themselves, Royston built something that outlasted any single paper: an \u2018invisible college\u2019 of scholars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough decades of workshops, conferences, and mentorship at the University of Alberta, he and Hinings turned their research partnership into a generative community\u2014one that trained generations of Ph.D. students who carried Royston\u2019s intellectual values\u2014rigor combined with generosity, critique offered as invitation rather than takedown\u2014to institutions worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meyer said that people who encountered Greenwood consistently described an almost uncanny combination of incisiveness and warmth\u2014he was someone who would tell students and colleagues bluntly when their work wasn\u2019t good enough yet and then spend an entire Friday afternoon helping them to fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something almost recursive about Royston\u2019s career,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cHe and Hinings spent decades studying how groups of committed people\u2014deploying shared values, staging gatherings, building coalitions\u2014can deliberately reshape institutions from within.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd meanwhile, without quite framing it this way, they spent those same decades doing exactly that: convening workshops, founding conferences, one of which grew into a major international research event still running today, and building a department at the University of Alberta into a globally influential research community,\u201d he said. \u201cThe theory wasn\u2019t just describing organizations out there\u2014it was describing the very mechanism by which Royston built his own academic home and his own field of influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t just theorize about how embedded actors change institutions\u2014he was quietly demonstrating it the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Roy Suddaby<\/a> of the University of Victoria<\/strong>
\n\u200b
\n\u201cMost scholars will remember Royston Greenwood for his extraordinary academic accomplishments. His intellectual legacy is immense: a body of work that shaped institutional theory, transformed our understanding of organizational change, and influenced generations of scholars around the world. I was fortunate to experience that legacy firsthand as his student, colleague, and friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet when I think of Royston, my first memories are not of conferences, publications, or editorial appointments. They are of hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Royston grew up as a devoted football supporter in England, he embraced Canadian hockey with characteristic enthusiasm after moving to Alberta. He became a passionate Edmonton Oilers fan, and some of the most important lessons I learned about academia took place not in classrooms or offices but in conversations at the old Edmonton Coliseum. Between periods, over coffee, or while dissecting the latest coaching decision, Royston would talk about ideas, people, careers, and the peculiar craft of academic life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, I thought we were talking about hockey. Looking back, I realize we were talking about mentorship and leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoyston loved scholarship and excelled at it, but his greatest gift was recognizing potential in others and helping them become more than they imagined possible. Like the best coaches, he could see strengths before others saw them. He knew when to challenge, when to encourage, when to offer advice, and when to simply let people find their own way. Many of us who were fortunate enough to work with him owe a significant part of our careers to his judgment, generosity, and belief in us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made Royston special was that he invested in people with the same energy and seriousness that he invested in ideas. His success as a scholar was remarkable, but his success in developing scholars may be even more enduring. His influence lives on not only in his writings but in the many students, colleagues, and friends whose lives he shaped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned a great deal from Royston about institutional theory, organizations, and research. But the lessons I value most were about how to build a scholarly community, how to support younger colleagues, and how to combine intellectual rigor with generosity and humanity.<\/p>\n

“I will miss his wisdom, his wit, and our conversations. Most of all, I will miss the coach behind the scholar.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sample of Greenwood\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong>:<\/p>\n