Change in Organizations

Front Cover
Defense Technical Information Center, 1982 - 430 pages
This book is a collection of essays on change. Its purpose is to sharpen our conceptualizations of change. The audience is anyone concerned with developing his or her theoretical view of change. At the conclusion there is no neatly drawn theory of change. We do not see that the current state of knowledge as represented in the literature supports such an endeavor. Nor is it clear that such a theory could be constructed in the near future. Neither is the book a comprehensive statement about change. Although this first chapter provides a brief status report on the change literature, the principal essays only sample certain domains of change. A casual reflection on change should indicate that it encompasses almost all our concepts in the organizational behavior literature. Think about leadership motivation, organizational environment, and roles. It is impossible to think about these and other concepts without inquiring about change. Our strategy is not to be comprehensive but to focus on some central concepts or processes about change that may be generalizable over different topic areas. We selected the book title because it focuses attention on change in organizations rather than solely on changing organizations. We are interested in change at the individual, group, organization, or organizational-environment interface, but not in particular organizations such as schools, business, or governments.

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