STEERING THE COURSE: EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP CHANGE ON ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH IN ORCHESTRAL ORGANIZATIONS

This study uses interviews, scholarly resources and public materials to study the effects that executive leadership change has on the health of the culture of an orchestral organization. Fourteen U.S. orchestral organizations participated, sharing stories of organizational transformations that occurred upon hiring a new chief executive. After establishing the centrality that the chief executive holds within an orchestral organization and the emotional impact a change process can have upon an organizational culture, each stage of Kotter’s Eight-Stage Change Process was explicated to provide context for the changes that occurred and subsequently applied to the active change transformations occurring within the orchestral organizations. Once ascertained that change has a great impact on organizational culture, this research begins to make connections between the internal cultural impact of organizational change and the health of the culture of the organization.