Ford Research Group
Not every organizational change should be sustained. In fact, it is estimated that 40 to 70% of all organizational changes are not sustained. When a change is not sustained, it represents a direct waste of invested resources and can lead to change fatigue. Sustainability frameworks help to differentiate between two important concepts in sustainability research: sustainability capacity and sustainment of change within an organization.
Capacity refers to “the existence of structures and processes that allow a program to leverage resources to effectively implement and maintain evidence-based policies and activities” (Schell et al., 2013). An organization’s sustainability capacity (SC) is influenced by multilevel factors or constructs related to organizational attributes, environmental contextual features, and intervention characteristics.
Sustainment of change, in contrast, refers to “the extent an evidence-based intervention can deliver its intended benefits over an extended period of time” (Chambers et al., 2013). In other words, how long over an extended period of time is an organization able to maintain or even improve upon the benefits (e.g., reduce wait time) of the change after the intervention implementation period ends.
This body of research focuses on understanding sustainability capacity and how it might influence sustainment of change within an organization.