Advice on Communicating During Organizational Change: The Content of Popular Press Books

Abstract

This study offers a thematic analysis of the advice from a sample of bestselling popular press books on the subject of communication during implementation of organizational change. This analysis uncovered themes concerning the communicative role of change agents, general strategies for communicating and introducing change, and tactics for communicating during implementation of change. Themes within each of these general categories are presented and discussed in terms of their prevalence and general character. Implications for how practitioners can make the best use of this advice and how it compares to empirical findings in the scholarly literature are then discussed. Further directions for organizational communication scholarship are suggested.

Change management practices: Impact on perceived change results

“…Several authors argue that facilitating communication during the change process, allows different stake holders to understand what, when and why the organization is changing, facilitating the acceptance and adaptation of new circumstances (Dutton et al, 2001;Lewis et al, 2006). Different authors emphasize the importance of leadership, during the change implementation stage.…”

“…Academic and professional literature propose a set of managerial practices that better support the enactment of organizational change processes (Armenakis and Bedeian, 1999;Buchanan et al, 2005;Casio, 2002;Jones et al, 2004;Kanter, 2001;Kotter, 1996;Meyer and Stensaker, 2006;Nadler, 1998;Whelan-Berry et al, 2003, among others). Nevertheless significant gaps in the understanding of both how these practices work, and in their effectiveness exist (Doyle et al, 2000;Lewis et al, 2006). This study is an empirical research on change management practices (CMPs) which expands current literature in three ways.…”

Staff perceptions of a Productive Community Services implementation: A qualitative interview study

“…This may be explained by the inexperience of the implementation team, as although they had good knowledge of the organisation, they had little experience of implementing change. The change and innovation literature emphasises the salience of communication (for example see Lewis et al, 2006), however this knowledge did not reach the team, or they were not able to effectively put it into practice. As this replicates findings by White et al (2013) for the Productive Ward implementations, this reinforces the need to find ways to better bridge the gap between theory and practice for implementation teams.…”

Communicating Change in Organizational Restructuring: A Grounded Theory Case Study

“…The utilisation of multi-channels to disseminate information is not an assurance that communication is successful. Most importantly, communication must involve and engage the various stakeholders (Lewis, Schmisseur, Stephens, & Weir, 2006). This can be done through consultations and the exchange of feedbacks and ample time must be provided for this to take place.…”