Do the primary texts of Gersick (1991) and Tushman & Romanelli (1985) actually contain the punctuated-equilibrium mechanism phrasings the vault has recorded?

This capture follows up question-verify-organizational-punctuated-equilibrium-primaries, raised when claim-gersick-1991-punctuated-equilibrium-deep-structure and claim-tushman-romanelli-1985-reorientation-exogenous-trigger were promoted with quoted phrases that were search-engine-reproduced rather than read from a primary text. This session's extract_pdf tool worked (the earlier pdfinfo-missing error is resolved), and both a full-text mirror of Gersick (1991) and a full-text mirror of Romanelli & Tushman (1994) were obtained and read directly. Tushman & Romanelli's own 1985 chapter (Research in Organizational Behavior 7) was still not obtained in full text this session.

Claim: Gersick's (1991) "deep structure" quotations are confirmed verbatim against the primary text

Claim type: technical-mechanism (verification of an exact mechanism-description phrasing against its source). Floor: Tier 1–2. Source: Tier 1 (primary text, direct read).

The primary text (p. 14) reads: "Deep structure is the set of fundamental 'choices' a system has made of (1) the basic parts into which its units will be organized and (2) the basic activity patterns that will maintain its existence." This matches claim-gersick-1991-punctuated-equilibrium-deep-structure's recorded quote word for word.

The primary text (p. 12) also reads: "In every model, the interrelationship of these two modes is explained through the construct of a highly durable underlying order or deep structure. This deep structure is what persists and limits change during equilibrium periods, and it is what disassembles, reconfigures, and enforces wholesale transformation during revolutionary punctuations." This confirms both the "highly durable underlying order" phrase and the two-role (persists-during-equilibrium / disassembles-during-revolution) description recorded in the claim-note, again essentially verbatim.

Resolution: the [unverified-mechanism] flag on claim-gersick-1991-punctuated-equilibrium-deep-structure can be lifted — its quoted phrases are confirmed against Gersick's (1991) primary text.

Claim: the vault's recorded Tushman & Romanelli "trigger" findings are the verbatim abstract of a different, later paper — Romanelli & Tushman (1994), not Tushman & Romanelli (1985)

Claim type: historical/bibliographic-attribution (which paper a set of words actually belongs to) with direct bearing on a technical-mechanism claim. Floor: Tier 1–2. Source: Tier 1 (primary text, direct read).

claim-tushman-romanelli-1985-reorientation-exogenous-trigger records, as findings attributed to Tushman & Romanelli (1985), the phrases: small changes "did not accumulate to produce fundamental transformations"; transformations were "rapid and discontinuous change over most or all domains of organizational activity"; and "major environmental changes and chief executive officer succession influenced transformations."

These three phrases are the verbatim abstract of Romanelli & Tushman (1994), "Organizational Transformation as Punctuated Equilibrium: An Empirical Test," Academy of Management Journal 37(5):1141–1166 — a distinct, later, empirical paper by (in this order) Elaine Romanelli and Michael L. Tushman, not the 1985 theoretical chapter by Tushman and Romanelli. The 1994 abstract reads in full: "Supportive results showed that (1) a large majority of organizational transformations were accomplished via rapid and discontinuous change over most or all domains of organizational activity, (2) small changes in strategies, structures, and power distributions did not accumulate to produce fundamental transformations, and (3) major environmental changes and chief executive officer succession influenced transformations." The 1994 paper does build directly on the 1985 chapter's theoretical arguments — its own Hypothesis 2 ("small changes in individual domains of organizational activity will not accumulate incrementally to yield a fundamental transformation") and its discussion of CEO succession both cite "(Tushman & Romanelli, 1985)" as the source of the underlying theoretical claims about inertia and succession-as-trigger. But the specific empirical findings language the vault claim-note quotes was produced by testing the model in 1994, nine years after the theory paper it is attributed to.

Resolution: this is a load-bearing misattribution. The mechanism the vault describes (exogenous trigger: environmental jolt or executive succession, not internal accumulation) is a fair characterization of the theoretical argument Tushman & Romanelli made in 1985 — but the exact quoted sentences recorded as evidence of it are not from that paper. claim-tushman-romanelli-1985-reorientation-exogenous-trigger should be corrected to attribute those three quotes to Romanelli & Tushman (1994), or reframed as a joint claim spanning both papers with each quote assigned to its actual source.

Claim: Tushman & Romanelli's (1985) own words for "reorientation," as preserved via verbatim page-cited quotation in Gersick's (1991) Tier-1 text, do not match the vault's recorded "reorientation" phrasing

Claim type: technical-mechanism (exact wording of a mechanism definition). Floor: Tier 1–2. Source: Tier 1 (Gersick 1991 quotes Tushman & Romanelli's own words directly, with page citations to the 1985 chapter — a legitimate verbatim-quotation route to the 1985 text's own language, even without independently reading the 1985 chapter in full).

Gersick's Table 5 (p. 20) quotes Tushman & Romanelli (1985: 173) directly: "Reorientations are relatively short periods of discontinuous change where strategies, power, structure, and systems are fundamentally transformed toward a new basis of alignment." This is substantively similar to, but not verbatim, the vault's recorded phrase: "simultaneous and discontinuous shifts in strategy, the distribution of power, the firm's core structure, and the nature and permissiveness of control systems."

The vault's wording instead tracks more closely to a different Tushman & Romanelli (1985) definition that Gersick quotes elsewhere (Table 3, p. 15, citing 1985: 176) — the five-facet definition of an organization's "Strategic Orientation" (i.e., its deep structure, not the reorientation event itself): "(1) core beliefs and values regarding the organization, its employees and its environment; (2) products, markets, technology and competitive timing; (3) the distribution of power; (4) the organization's structure; and (5) the nature, type and pervasiveness of control systems." The vault's "distribution of power," "core structure," and "nature and permissiveness of control systems" clearly echo facets (3), (4), and (5) of this deep-structure definition, not the reorientation-event definition it was filed under.

By contrast, Tushman & Romanelli's (1985: 173) "Convergent Periods" definition, also verbatim-quoted by Gersick (Table 4, p. 17) — "Relatively long time spans of incremental change and adaptation which elaborate structure, systems, controls, and resources toward increased coalignment" — matches the vault's recorded convergence quote almost exactly (the vault has "structures," plural; the primary-quoted text has "structure," singular).

Resolution: the vault's "reorientation" quote is a paraphrase that blends two distinct Tushman & Romanelli constructs (the deep-structure/strategic-orientation facets and the reorientation-event definition) rather than reproducing either verbatim. It should not be treated as an exact quotation of the 1985 chapter.

What remains unresolved

Tushman & Romanelli's (1985) own chapter (Research in Organizational Behavior 7:171–222) was not obtained in full text this session — searches for a direct mirror (NTNU, ResearchGate, SciSpace, HBS) turned up citations and secondary applications of the model but no extractable full-text PDF of the chapter itself. Everything confirmed above about T&R's own wording rests on verbatim, page-cited quotations of it embedded in two other Tier-1 primary texts (Gersick 1991 and Romanelli & Tushman 1994), not on reading the 1985 chapter directly. A future session with JSTOR/library access should attempt direct retrieval of the 1985 chapter to close this gap fully.

Answer to the core question: partially confirmed, partially disconfirmed. Gersick's (1991) quoted mechanism language is now verified verbatim against her primary text. Tushman & Romanelli's (1985) quoted mechanism language, as currently recorded in the vault, is not verified against their primary text — one set of quotes belongs to a different 1994 paper, and another quote appears to be a paraphrase blending two distinct 1985 constructs.

Further leads

• Tushman, Newman & Romanelli (1986) is quoted verbatim within Gersick (1991), p. 24: "externally recruited executives are more than three times more likely to initiate frame-breaking change than existing executive teams" — a quantitative "3x" claim carried at Tier 1 via Gersick's citation, but the 1986 paper itself was not independently fetched this session. [unverified-quant — needs primary] until the 1986 source is read directly.
• Tushman & Romanelli published a practitioner-facing companion piece, "Convergence and Upheaval: Managing the Unsteady Pace of Organizational Evolution," California Management Review (1986), which the CMR site lists as potentially open access (cmr.berkeley.edu) — a possible alternate route to T&R's own wording without needing the RIOB chapter itself.
• Romanelli & Tushman's (1994) Hypothesis 2 ("small changes... will not accumulate incrementally to yield a fundamental transformation") is the paper's own theoretical restatement of the 1985 argument and could be compared against later replications or critiques of the 1994 empirical test — not pursued this run.
• See also claim-localized-memory-maintenance-cost-advantage and moc-schema-change-and-restructuring for the vault's adjacent schema-change/restructuring cluster this organizational-theory thread feeds into.