Change That Concludes

Abstract Organizational change ends things while it creates new openings. This conclusive aspect of change tends to be underappreciated by both change agents and academics. We integrate streams of literature to answer four questions. First, we ask where and when conclusive change happens in organizations: what are its representative contexts? Then we ask what conclusive change is: what other types of change are there and how do conclusions fit in? Our third question is why conclusive change remains underappreciated. Bringing insight together from the three previous questions, we conclude the paper by asking how change agents should approach conclusive change.