This article describes the emergence of change management as a service offering of major consulting firms. The authors compare change management with traditional organizational development (OD) in terms of theory and analytical framework, the role of the interventionist, and intervention strategies. They argue that change management has the potential to become a discipline that can unite the different “thought worlds” operating in the field of planned organizational change.
McGill Uni ver sityEven the field's lead ers admit that orga ni za tional devel op ment (OD) has had problems adapt ing to the need for better approaches to man ag ing change. For exam ple, Burke (1997) observed that OD prac ti tio ners stood on the side lines and watched while new man age ment tech niques were being intro duced. In a review of the sociotechnical sys tems (STS) tra di tion, Mathews (1997) con cluded that there were prac ti cally no exam ples of com pa nies that had cho sen STS over com pet ing approaches such as business pro cess reengineering. Around the world, busi ness pro cess reengineering was the choice for firms intend ing to trans form their work pro cesses through the use of informa tion tech nol ogy (IT). Although we can all agree that the reengineering approach was flawed in some respects, it behooves OD prac ti tio ners to crit i cally exam ine why their con ven tional frame works and meth ods lost out in the mar ket place so com pletely. As Mathews noted, more effort was spent by pro po nents of STS on ideo log i cal contests than on devel op ing sound meth od ol o gies and pro ce dures that would have taken STS into the main stream and linked it with IT inno va tions. 380Nicolay Worren is a con sul tant at Andersen Con sulting's Oslo office. He is cur rently on a pro j ect at the firm's Insti tute for Stra te gic Change in Boston.
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