Managing Change ^{2nd Ed.}

Are you a perpetrator, a spectator or a victim of change? The chances are that in a given working week you are all three. Externally, we find ourselves in an unpredictable economy with turbulent markets, self-eclipsing technology and dramatic demographic trends. Inside our organisations the goal posts constantly shift, the cultural and subcultural mix grows ever more divergent and people remain as inflexible as ever! It is timely to draw a breath and reflect on the processes, pathways and precipitous outcomes of change.

• How do you implement a project that you have not originated with a team you have not chosen?
• Why do some managers thrive on ambiguity while others are frozen by its complexity?
• Do internal and external change-agents have a role in the successful facilitation of change?
• Top-down change is more often endured than enduring. Why is this and what can be done to make change stick?
• Is change ever rational? What planning assumptions apply to diferent types of change?

These and other change conundrums have been brought together to provide a set of readings for students on the Open University Business School diploma level courses on Managing Change, DMS and MBA students and line managers generally will find here a rich store of practical applications and provocative research.

• Part 1: Imperative of Change
1. Understanding the Environment
   Andrew Pettigrew and Richard Whipp
2. Managing 21st Century Network Organizations
   Charles C. Snow, Raymond E. Miles and Henry Coleman, Jr.
3. What is Happening to Middle Management?
   Sue Dopson and Rosemary Stewart
4. The Art and Science of Mess Management
   Russell L. Ackoff
• Part 2: Proces of Change
1. Processes of Managing Strategic Change
   Gerry Johnson
2. Managing Strategic Change
   James Brian Quinn
3. Concepts for the Management of Organizational Change
   David A. Nadler
4. Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change
   Michael Beer, Russell A. Eisenstat and Bert Spector
5. Understanding and Managing Organizational Change
   Derek Pugh
• Part 3: Implementing Change
1. In Defence of Process Consultation
   David Coghlan
2. Implementing New Technology
   Dorothy Leonard-Barton and William A. Kraus
3. Problem Solving in Small Groups: Team Members as Agents of Change
   Bill Mayon-White
4. How to Implement Strategy
   Arthur A. Owen
• Part 4: Examples of Change
1. Organization Development in British Telecom
   Colin Price and Eamonn Murphy
2. Creating Successful Organization Change
   Leonard D. Goodstein and W. Warner Burke
3. Team Building, Inter-Agency Team Development and Social Work Practice
   Paul Iles and Randhir Auluck
4. Facilitating Radical Change
   Christopher Mabey
5. Management Science and Organizational Change: A Framework for Analysis
   G. Walsham
• Part 5: Perspectives on Change
1. Understanding Power in Organizations
   Jeffrey Pfeffer
2. Organizational Change
   Nigel Nicholson
3. Organizations as Political Systems
   Gareth Morgan
4. The Management of Change
   Peter Marris

This was mandatory reading when I took my MBA. If you can, skip it.

It exists tidbits in the articles that have some interest, but they are too few and far between, so it is not worth it.