Organizational Change Theory

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Change is inevitable and a necessary process for organizations in order to remain and function competitive in the industry. As Tsoukas and Chia (2002) state, change is a natural, normal condition of the organization life, in the quasi-stable structure of the organization series of ongoing change occurs unintended or intendent, based on the interaction with the external environment and on the intrinsic thoughts of human actors about their webs, beliefs and actions. There are five main theories, which capture the explanation of why and how change happens, the evolution theory, the life-cycle, the teleology, the dialectic theory (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995) and the emergency theory (Plowman et al., 2007). Through the lens of the of the dialectic…show more content…
Once we have identified which external and internal factors lead to the occurrence of change, we face the challenge how to manage it successfully. There are four main perspectives, the rational, the cognitive, the communicational and the power and resistance, which plead from different dimensions on how can be change managed and how can firms achieve organizational strategic fit. The traditional rational change model, the strategic choice, describes a linear model, which highlight the role of the top management in achieving the desired strategic change (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). According to their interpretative approach, the top management envision, signal the change message to the stakeholders, then revision the strategy based on the feedback of the stakeholders and finally energizing them towards the change through an iterative process of influencing them (sensegiving) and understanding their claims (sensemaking). In this concept we can see the critical role of power and leadership, since the success of the change process is highly dependent on the top management persuading capabilities, however they do not consider the existence of the conflicting interest of the members of the organization, since the top management has the complete control over the…show more content…
In the organization there is a conflict between the top management opinion about the strategy and the independent business units’ bottom up initiations. The choice of the top management, regarding the further business strategy, causes co- evolutionary lockin, where the firm is unable to change the current scope of strategy. The case of Intel showed the strategic misfit through the top management selection about the ideas, which were aligned with the core strategy, and caused lockin in the PC market, which has loosened from

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