Why most organisational change fails and what psychology actually tells us about making it hold

Organisations spend enormous amounts of time, money and energy trying to change. New strategies are announced, structures redrawn, systems implemented and culture programmes launched. Yet the familiar statistic persists: roughly 70% of major change initiatives fail to deliver their intended results. The paradox is striking. At the heart of every organisational change is a simple requirement: people must behave differently. They need to adopt new ways of working, stop old habits and keep doing the new things long enough for them to become normal. Despite this, the vast majority of change models and programmes pay surprisingly little attention to the science of behaviour change itself.

A 2025 review article in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour by Sviatlana Kamarova, Marylène Gagné and colleagues directly confronts this gap. The authors integrate two literatures that have largely developed in parallel: the organisational change literature and the behaviour-change literature. Using self-determination theory as their organising framework, they propose an Integrated Model of Organisational Change (IMOC) that links specific change practices to the psychological mechanisms that actually drive adoption and long-term maintenance.

The missing link: Psychological mechanisms

Most change models focus on what leaders and change agents should do. They recommend communicating the vision, involving people, removing barriers and celebrating early wins. These practices matter, but they are only effective to the extent that they activate deeper psychological processes in the people expected to change.

Drawing on both organisational theories and behaviour-change research, Kamarova and colleagues identify three core psychological mechanisms that appear repeatedly:

1. Self-efficacy: the belief that “I can do this.” Without a sense of competence, people either avoid the new behaviour or perform it half-heartedly.
2. Meaning: the sense that the change is worthwhile and aligned with something that matters. People need to understand not just what is changing, but why it matters to them personally and professionally.
3. Belongingness: the feeling of connection and support. Change that isolates people or threatens valued relationships is far more likely to be resisted or abandoned.

These three mechanisms map closely onto the basic psychological needs identified in self-determination theory: competence, autonomy (experienced as meaningful choice and ownership) and relatedness. When these needs are supported, people are more likely to internalise the change rather than merely comply with it. Compliance may produce short-term activity; internalisation produces sustained behaviour.

Practices to mechanisms

The real contribution of the integrated model is that it systematically links common change practices to these mechanisms. For example:

• Providing clear information, training and opportunities for mastery builds self-efficacy.
• Involving people in shaping the change, explaining the rationale and connecting it to shared values strengthens meaning and a sense of ownership.
• Creating supportive relationships, visible role models and a climate of psychological safety feeds belongingness.

When practices are chosen and sequenced with these mechanisms in mind, change efforts become more coherent. Instead of a scattergun of “best practices,” leaders can deliberately target the psychological conditions required for people to adopt and then maintain new ways of working.

Why maintenance matters more than launch

A recurring weakness in traditional change programmes is the focus on the launch phase. The announcement, the training and the first 90 days receive heavy attention. What happens after the initial energy fades receives far less. Behaviour-change research has long shown that initiation and maintenance are distinct processes. The psychological supports needed to start something new are not always the same as those needed to keep doing it when the novelty wears off and competing demands return. The integrated model therefore emphasises both adoption and maintenance. Practices that help people feel competent, find personal meaning and stay connected remain important long after the formal change project has closed.

Practical implications

For leaders and change practitioners, the message is clear:

• Stop treating organisational change primarily as a communication, project-management or structural problem. It is fundamentally a behaviour-change problem played out at scale.
• Diagnose which of the three mechanisms (self-efficacy, meaning, belongingness) are currently weak in the groups you need to change.
• Choose and sequence interventions that deliberately strengthen those mechanisms rather than assuming that more communication or more training will automatically work.
• Design for maintenance from the beginning. Plan how support, feedback, role modelling and meaning will continue after the formal programme ends.

The research does not offer a new silver-bullet model. Instead it offers a clearer map of the psychological terrain that any successful change must navigate. When organisations ignore that terrain, they keep rediscovering the same expensive lesson: people do not change simply because the organisation has decided they should. They change when the conditions that support human motivation and sustained behaviour are deliberately created and maintained. That insight, simple, evidence-based and still widely underused, remains one of the most practical contributions psychology can make to organisational life.

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