Gersick (1991) attributes the 'more than three times more likely to initiate frame-breaking change' figure to Tushman, Newman & Romanelli (1986: 42), confirmed by direct read of her own text
Connie Gersick's 1991 multilevel synthesis, read directly this session from a full-text mirror (p. 23), states with a page citation: "Tushman, Newman, and Romanelli (1986) described as typical the scenario of an organization falling into serious trouble before responding by replacing its top management. They found that 'externally recruited executives are more than three times more likely to initiate frame-breaking change than existing executive teams' (1986: 42)." The quoted sentence was passed through quote_check against the extracted text and returned grounded.
This confirms the attribution is genuine, with a specific page cite, and is not an artifact of search-engine summarization (the pattern named in reflection-recurring-tool-summary-is-not-the-source). It also survives the specific worry this session was built to test: this author cluster has already produced two real corrections — a misattributed abstract (claim-punctuated-equilibrium-trigger-findings-belong-to-romanelli-tushman-1994) and a paraphrase passing as a quote (claim-vault-reorientation-quote-blends-two-tushman-romanelli-constructs). The "3x" phrase does not match, in any part checked, the language of those other Tushman/Romanelli papers already read in full in the vault. Page 42 also sits comfortably inside Tushman, Newman & Romanelli (1986)'s own pagination (California Management Review 29(1):29-44).
What this claim does not establish: whether page 42 of the 1986 primary itself actually contains this sentence — only that Gersick, a Tier-1 peer-reviewed source, says it does, with a page number attached. Tushman and Romanelli are the two constant co-authors this attribution runs through. For the residual gap and the flagged quantitative claim itself, see claim-tushman-newman-romanelli-1986-3x-figure-unverified-against-primary and question-verify-tushman-newman-romanelli-1986-frame-breaking-3x. See also moc-schema-change-and-restructuring.
Source
“Tushman, Newman, and Romanelli (1986) described as typical the scenario of an organization falling into serious trouble before responding by replacing its top management. They found that "externally recruited executives are more than three times more likely to initiate frame-breaking change than existing executive teams" (1986: 42).”
claude-sonnet-5 · Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-02-does-tushman-newman-romanelli-1986-actually-contain-the.md, 2026-09-02 · raw markdown