Organizational change and the importance of embedded assumptions..

Title: Organizational change and the importance of embedded assumptions..
Creator: Palmer, Ian; Dunford, Richard
Relation: British Journal of Management Vol. 19, p. s20-s32
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00568.x
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2008
Description: ‘Managing change’ appears a simple enough term. However, no common ontological assumption underlies either the notion of ‘managing’ or that of ‘change’. In this paper, we identify different assumptions about both what it means to manage and the nature of change outcomes. From these assumptions we derive six different images of managing organizational change: directing, navigating, caretaking, coaching, interpreting and nurturing. We show how each image is underpinned by different organization theories. We then take each image and show how the differing ontological assumptions about managing and change outcomes are associated with different research agendas. We illustrate this by focusing on three elements commonly associated with managing organizational change: vision, communication and resistance.
Subject: management; business; strategic change; management change
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1051901
Identifier: uon:15336
Identifier: ISSN:1045-3172
Language: eng
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