A central idea in organizational research and practice is that change efforts demand a sense of urgency. It is also commonly accepted that renewal beyond incremental improvements demand individuals and teams to have what earlier research has called a “promotion focus”—to think innovatively, see opportunities, and think long term. Urgency, however, leads to a “prevention focus,” with which teams and their members are more inclined to seek incremental improvements and error reduction. Hence, urgency seems to both support change and prevent it. Earlier research has not established the conditions under which urgency may lead to creative and productive outcomes. This paper aims to do so. In a study of seven change initiatives at a large media company undergoing a serious crisis, we found that urgency cues could be productively handled by managers and project team members when they addressed three core relationships: (a) the success-failure relationship, (b) the safety-accountability relationship, and (c) the operative-strategic relationship. We make three related theoretical propositions regarding the role of urgency in innovation-driven change and transformation.

组织研究和实践的中心思想是变革努力需要紧迫感。人们普遍认为，超越渐进式改进的更新要求个人和团队拥有早期研究所称的“促进焦点”——创新思维、发现机会和长期思考。然而，紧迫性会导致“预防焦点”，团队及其成员更倾向于寻求渐进式改进和减少错误。因此，紧迫性似乎既支持变革又阻止变革。早期的研究尚未确定紧迫性可能导致创造性和富有成效的结果的条件。本文旨在做到这一点。在对一家正面临严重危机的大型媒体公司进行的七项变革举措的研究中，我们发现，当经理和项目团队成员处理三个核心关系时，他们可以有效地处理紧急提示：(a) 成功-失败关系，(b) 安全-责任关系，以及 (c) 运营-战略关系。我们就紧迫性在创新驱动的变革和转型中的作用提出了三个相关的理论命题。