Critical Issues in Large‐scale Change

Abstract

In the past several years, there has been an increasing interest in the management of large-scale change efforts. Although the content and objectives of specific types of large-scale change efforts may vary, in general, such efforts require changes that encompass the entire organization, have occurred over a number of years, and involve fundamental modifications in ways of thinking about the business, the organization, and how the organization is managed (Nadler, 1988). Despite the increased interest in the topic of large-scale change, few empirical studies have examined this phenomenon. While several studies have investigated important issues in various types of planned change efforts (Buchanan, 1971; Franklin, 1976; Burke, Clark and Koopman, 1984), studies of large-scale change seem to be underrepresented in the planned change literature.