Journal of Organizational Change Management A theoretical framework of organizational change (original) (raw)
Related papers
A theoretical framework of organizational change
Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2013
Purpose-Organizational change is a risky endeavour. Most change initiatives fall short on their goals and produce high opportunity and process costs, which at times outweigh the content benefits of organizational change. This paper seeks to develop a framework, offering a theoretical toolbox to analyze context-dependent barriers and enablers of organizational change. Starting from an organizational identity perspective, it aims to link contingency-based approaches, such as environmental scan, SWOT and stakeholder analysis, with insights from organizational behaviour research, such as knowledge sharing and leadership. Design/methodology/approach-The framework is informed by long-lasting field research into organizational change in an international policing environment. The theories in the framework are selected from the perspective of field validity in two ways; they were chosen because the topics covered by these theories emerged as relevant during the field research and therefore it can be expected they have applicability to the field. The authors' insights and suggestions are summarised in 13 propositions throughout the text. Findings-The analysis provides a clear warning that organizational change is more risky and multifaceted than change initiators typically assume. It is stressed that the external environment and the internal dynamics of organizations co-determine the meaning of managerial practices. This implies that cure-all recipes to organizational change are bound to fail. Originality/value-This paper makes an ambitious attempt to cross disciplinary boundaries in the field of organizational change research to contribute to a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of change processes by integrating perspectives that focus on the internal context and the external environment of organizations.
Organizational Change: Framing the Issues
Revista de Științe Politice/ Revue des Sciences Politiques, 2018
The study of change is a major concern at present in all fields of science. Traditionally, in philosophy and socio-human sciences, the concept of change was approached as opposed to that of stability, with intense debates about the desirability and importance of order and stability vs. the unpredictability of change. While in classical approaches to organizational change the conceptions that favoured order, stability, and routine prevailed, modern approaches recognize the decisive role of accepting change for the development and progress of organizations. In the field of organization development and organizational becoming nowadays strategies are sought and devised in order to align the organizations not only with their rapid inner changing, but also with the external multiple, complex, and dynamic environments. Starting from an outline of the factors of change and of the term of change as it has been conceptualized in sociology, the present paper aims to delineate a general framework for addressing organizational change. In this regard, after discussing the relationship between organizational change and the social and economic environment and delineating the main areas and agents of change in an organization, the various types of change in the organization and the models of their approach are addressed. Furthermore, since the resistance to change is a common and omnipresent human and social phenomenon, including at the level of groups and organizations, the paper approaches also the causes and manifestations of change resistance, as well as the possible measures for combating this phenomenon, in situations where the change is beneficial and necessary.
Organisational Change: A Critical Review of the Literature
2016
This paper presents a literature review on change management. Change management has been defined as ‘the process of continually renewing an organisation’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers (Moran & Brightman 2000). Kanter (1992) contends that we live in a constantly changing world, and change has an impact on the individuals and the organisation as a whole. In this context, organisations have to look into the future to find new advantages. New technologies, new products, new competitors, new regulations, and new people with new values and experience is the order of the modern organisation. Nevertheless, theories and approaches to change management are often conflicting, lacking in empirical evidence and based on unchallenged assumptions about the nature of modern organisational change management. This paper looks at some of the main theories and approaches to organisational change management as an important fir...
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore, how organization theoretically diverse research on OCR is actually grounded, since insights into the organization theoretical foundations of OCR are completely lacking. Design/methodology/approach -A selection of 85 articles on organizational change was made, published in top tier journals in 2010. The authors conducted a reference analysis based on 18 prominent organization theories and their main contributing authors. Findings -The findings show firstly a very strong theoretical selectivity, focusing on cognitive, learning, and neo-institutional theories. Other theories are almost fully neglected. Secondly, this analysis suggests that current OCR struggles hard with transforming the cognitive frames of topical OT into fruitful accesses to the own object. The resulting theory application appears as a dissatisfying escape strategy, performed to cover theoretical antagonisms and to avoid a deeper confrontation with the underlying assumptions of OCR.
Organisational change research: challenges and assumptions. What about possibilities?
2017
As organisations have been attempting to deal with the practical difficulties that change brings, the debates and discussions seemed to have played to a number of themes and assumptions. Although the former has benefited from extensive research the latter has been neglected over the past seven decades. Whilst researchers have focused on planned and emergent change and the discourse and practice approaches, others have proposed dualism/paradox, change agency, behavioural and positioning theory as these are assumed will help management resolve challenges and achieve successful change. However, a study is yet to be carried out on what the taken-for-granted assumptions that these debates play to really are and what they could offer to an area that has been claimed to be under-theorised over decades. This lies at the crux of the paper’s aims and objectives. Through content analysis and the interpretation of the qualitative, empirical data, it has been found that employees’ preferences ha...
Reflections: Our Journey In Organizational Change Research and Practice
Journal of Change …, 2009
This commentary summarizes our research and practice on the topic of organizational change over the past 30 years. Our purpose in preparing this commentary is to explain how our efforts accumulated over this period to produce the questions we addressed, the answers our findings revealed, and the direction of our future efforts. We summarize our journey thus far relative to six signposts, namely: (a) the identification of five key beliefs underlying change recipient motivations to change; (b) an emphasis on change recipient active participation in the change effort; (c) the importance of diagnosis; (d) the importance of creating readiness for change; (e) the identification of strategies for influencing the five beliefs throughout the change process; and, (f) the assessment of reactions to organizational change. To give an idea of where our journeys will take us in the future, we identify five trips we plan to make: (a) examine the relative importance of the five key beliefs for influencing change recipient support; (b) expand our cognitive view of change motivation to include emotional reactions to change; (c) investigate the relationship between change recipient characteristics (such as regulatory focus) and reactions to organizational transformation; (d) explore the relationship between internal contextual variables (relations with local change agents and co-workers) during organizational change; and (e) focus on ethics in organizational change.
Organizational Change: Where Have We Come From and Where Are We Going?
International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences
This study was conducted to determine the most studied topics which studied in organizational change management and pave the way the future research in organizational change. For this purpose, first of all, concept of organizational change is explained by theoretical view. Then, the studies which were conducted before 2000 and after 2000 to today were examined in dimension of content, context, process and outcome. As a result, Theories of change, leadership and change, organizational change in multinational company, organizational culture and change, employees' behaviour, information technology and organizational development strategies are the most studied topics of organizational change literature. Also we stressed that leadership and technological change are the most studied topics especially after 2000, and non-linear changing approaches because of the fact that uncertainty and chaos in nowadays.