Organizational Change Theories

Classifies, presents, and discusses the contributions and the limits of the theories of organizational change using an historical perspective as its organizing scheme. This book focuses on process theories of organizational change. It discusses different theoretical perspectives and resulting implications.

Every leader understands the burning need for change–and every leader knows how risky it is, and how often it fails. To make organizational change work, you need to base it on science, not intuition. Despite hundreds of books on change, failure rates remain sky high. Are there deep flaws in the guidance change leaders are given? While eschewing the pat answers, linear models, and change recipes offered elsewhere, Paul Gibbons offers the first blueprint for change that fully reflects the newest advances in mindfulness, behavioral economics, the psychology of risk-taking, neuroscience, mindfulness, and complexity theory. Change management, ostensibly the craft of making change happen, is rife with myth, pseudoscience, and flawed ideas from pop psychology. In Gibbons’ view, change management should be “euthanized” and replaced with change agile businesses, with change leaders at every level. To achieve that, business education and leadership training in organizations needs to become more accountable for real results, not just participant satisfaction (the “edutainment” culture). Twenty-first century change leaders need to focus less on project results, more on creating agile cultures and businesses full of staff who have “get to” rather than “have to” attitudes. To do that, change leaders will have to leave behind the old paradigm of “carrots and sticks,” both of which destroy engagement. “New analytics” offer more data-driven approaches to decision making, but present a host of people challenges—where petabyte information flows meet traditional decision-making structures. These approaches will have to be complemented with “leading with science”—that is, using evidence-based management to inform strategy and policy decisions. In The Science of Successful Organizational Change , you'll learn: How the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world affects the scale and pace of change in today’s businesses How understanding of flaws in human decision-making can help leaders guide their teams toward wiser strategic decisions when the stakes are largest—including “when to trust your guy and when to trust a model” and “when all of us are smarter than one of us” How new advances in neuroscience have altered best practices in influencing colleagues; negotiating with partners; engaging followers' hearts, minds, and behaviors; and managing resistance How leading organizations are making use of the science of mindfulness to create agile learners and agile cultures How new ideas from analytics, forecasting, and risk are humbling those who thought they knew the future–and how the human side of analytics and the psychology of risk are paradoxically more important in this technologically enabled world What complexity theory means for decision-making in the context of your own business How to create resilient and agile business cultures and anti-fragile, dynamic business structures To link science with your "on-the-ground" reality, Gibbons tells “warts and all” stories from his twenty-plus years consulting to top teams and at the largest businesses in the world. You'll find case studies from well-known companies like IBM and Shell and CEO interviews from Nokia and Barclays Bank.

This revised and extended second edition evaluates the diverse approaches to organizational change that have defined the field. Explaining the assumptions and implications that accompany these diverse philosophies, this book demystifies the complexities of conflicting perspectives and delivers valuable insights into the research and practice of organizational change.

In his first complete text on the ADKAR model, Jeff Hiatt explains the origin of the model and explores what drives each building block of ADKAR. Learn how to build awareness, create desire, develop knowledge, foster ability and reinforce changes in your organization. The ADKAR Model is changing how we think about managing the people side of change, and provides a powerful foundation to help you succeed at change.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

The success of organizational change in a world of increasing volatility is highly dependent on the advocacy of stakeholders. It is the link between strategic decision-making and effective execution, between individual motivation and product innovation, and between delighted customers and growing revenues. Only by engaging stakeholders does change have a chance to be successful. This book presents a coherent and practical view of how organizations might engender engagement with organizational change within their operational, tactical and strategic practices. It does this by providing a comprehensive review of the theoretical and empirical works on engagement and change from a variety of academic and practical perspectives. The academic research presented in this book is reinforced by research from consultancies as well as insights from practitioners that provide timely evidence. Ultimately the aim is to help raise awareness of the need to foster engagement with OC through a stakeholder perspective and how this can be done successfully within organizations across the globe. Employee Engagement for Organizational Change is a valuable textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of organizational change, employee engagement, human resource management and leadership. Its balance of theory and practice also makes it a reliable resource for HR and organizational development practitioners.

Change is a constant in today's organizations. Leaders, managers, and employees at all levels must understand both how to implement planned changed and effectively handle unexpected change. The Fifth Edition of the Organization Change: Theory and Practice provides an eye-opening exploration into the nature of change by presenting the latest evidence-based research to discuss a range of theories, models, and perspectives on organization change. Bestselling author, W. Warner Burke, skillfully connects theory to practice with modern cases of effective and ineffective organization change, recent examples of transformational leadership and planned and revolutionary change, and best practices to successfully influence change. This fully-updated new edition also includes a new chapter on healthcare and government organizations, offering practical applications for non-profit organizations.

This exceptional book maps the vast change management landscape, demystifies its complexities, and engages readers with an accessible and balanced style. Through their original evaluation of organizational change philosophies and theories, the authors encourage us to move beyond prescriptive, paradigm-centred theories in order to understand the opportunities that each offers. Philosophies of Organizational Change offers an innovative re-evaluation of the assumptions governing decisions about organizational change. It will command interest and stimulate lively debate from practitioners, students and researchers in organization theory. Ian Palmer, RMIT University, Australia Using an approach similar to Gareth Morgan s Images of Organization, the authors have brought order to influential and highly disparate approaches to organizational change and have done so in a manner that is both well-researched and accessible to readers at many levels. It is a welcome resource for research, teaching and consulting indeed for anyone who wishes to look beyond favoured approaches to organizational change. This lively and up-to-date text will be most useful for students, scholars and scholar-practitioners alike. Julie Wofram Cox, Deakin University, Australia Philosophies of Organizational Change explains the assumptions that drive different perspectives on organizational change management. The book describes and examines the myriad philosophical interpretations of change, revealing how and why managers confront change using so many competing methods. Each philosophy introduces the reader to the key theories used to diagnose organizations and prescribe change interventions. The book critically evaluates the arguments underpinning organizational change approaches and shows how they lead to different techniques and tools for practical change. With its critical examination of current thinking on organizational change approaches, this book will appeal to scholars and researchers in organization theory and organization studies. It will also make an ideal resource for graduate and senior undergraduate students and practitioners looking to deepen their understanding of change interventions.