Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail?

A 70 per cent failure rate is frequently attributed to organizational change initiatives, raising questions about the origins and supporting evidence for this very specific statistic. This paper critically reviews five separate published instances identifying a 70 percent organizational change failure rate. In conclusion, whilst the existence of a popular narrative of 70 percent organizational change failure is acknowledged, there is no valid and reliable empirical evidence to support such a narrative.