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Organisational Change
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The Science · Research Foundation

The research foundation.

Built on more than forty years of organisational research from the University of Michigan and the Center for Positive Organizations — applied inside corporations, governments, healthcare systems and executive leadership teams worldwide.

The McFarlane Paradigm → The seven disciplines →
The evidence

Most management research studies dysfunction. This studies extraordinary performance.

IOC doesn't borrow a model. It stands on a coherent body of research built over four decades — and on the question that runs through all of it: what creates organisations that perform far beyond the average, and how is that made repeatable?

40+ Years

University of Michigan

Four decades of organisational research from Michigan and the Center for Positive Organizations.

Positive Organisational Scholarship

Studying the exceptional

Where most research studies what goes wrong, POS studies the conditions that create extraordinary organisations.

Competing Values Framework

A global standard

One of the world's most widely used organisational culture frameworks, applied across thousands of organisations. It underpins the OCAI culture assessment developed by Cameron and Quinn.

Positive Deviance

The exception, amplified

Not about fixing poor performers — about asking why exceptional performers succeed under the very same conditions, then amplifying it.

High-Quality Connections

The science of relationships

Extraordinary organisations are built through high-quality human connections that increase learning, resilience and performance.

Positive Leadership

Performance, not just morale

Positive leadership is associated with higher organisational performance, resilience and flourishing — not simply happier workplaces.

Performance is determined not only by strategy or structure, but by the state from which leaders lead.
Robert E. Quinn · Building the Bridge as You Walk on It
The core ideas

Seven connected disciplines — and what each one means for you.

The work draws on seven disciplines. For each, the same three questions: what the research is, what it means in practice, and what it changes for the business.

The Fundamental State of LeadershipResearch

The Fundamental State of Leadership

What it means

A leadership state — purpose-centred, internally directed — linked to deep behavioural change and elevated performance.

What you get

Leaders who hold their nerve and lift the people around them, rather than reacting to pressure.

The Competing Values FrameworkResearch

The Competing Values Framework

What it means

The world's most widely used culture diagnostic — a precise read of the culture you actually have versus the one you need.

What you get

A shared, evidence-based picture of culture to align a leadership team in days, not months.

Positive Organisational ScholarshipResearch

Positive Organisational Scholarship

What it means

The study of extraordinary organisational performance and sustained cultural transformation.

What you get

Change built on what makes the best organisations exceptional — not on fixing the average.

Positive DevianceResearch

Positive Deviance

What it means

Identifying the exceptional performance already present inside the system, and amplifying it.

What you get

Faster transformation without importing generic best practice — the answers are already in your building.

The Reflected Best SelfResearch

The Reflected Best Self

What it means

A strengths-based method revealing leadership identity through the perceptions of others.

What you get

Leaders who lead from their strongest, most authentic self — and know exactly what that is.

Organisational Behavioural ScienceResearch

Organisational Behavioural Science

What it means

The applied study of how groups think, decide and act.

What you get

Interventions that work with how people actually behave, so change holds under real conditions.

Executive Coaching PsychologyResearch

Executive Coaching Psychology

What it means

Evidence-based coaching grounded in developmental psychology and organisational transformation.

What you get

Personal change in your leaders that translates directly into organisational results.

The synthesis

The McFarlane Paradigm.

Most organisational change works at the level of behaviour. The Institute works at the level beneath it.

Values. Story. Core belief.

The internal architecture from which leadership, culture and behaviour emerge. Change the architecture, and behaviour follows.

The McFarlane Paradigm synthesises organisational science, identity-based change, executive coaching, behavioural systems thinking, and twenty-five years of applied transformation work into a single approach.

The McFarlane Paradigm — three concentric rings showing the Edge, Leadership State and the Core, where extraordinary performance is created.
LeadershipCultureCommunicationTeam dynamicsMeaningOrganisational narrative

The objective is not improvement. It is transformation that sustains itself.

The minds behind the work

Where the research comes from.

IOC applies this body of work in direct collaboration with the people who built it — through Lift Consulting and the University of Michigan.

Robert E. Quinn

University of Michigan

Originator of the Competing Values Framework and the Fundamental State of Leadership; co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations.

Kim S. Cameron

University of Michigan

Co-architect of the Competing Values Framework and a founder of Positive Organisational Scholarship and positive leadership research.

Shawn Quinn

Lift Consulting · University of Michigan

IOC's research & delivery partner. Leads Lift Consulting, the organisational development firm co-founded with Professor Robert Quinn, applying Positive Organisational Scholarship inside organisations in deep change.

Quinn, Cameron and Shawn Quinn are available to contribute directly to IOC engagements — from the London Positive Leadership Intensive to webinars, podcasts and executive sessions.

Lift Consulting → Center for Positive Organizations →

Every engagement begins the same way. One conversation.

Most organisations try to improve performance through strategy, systems and process. The Institute works beneath them — because the conditions leaders create determine the performance organisations sustain.

Request a Conversation → Explore The Signature →