To change or not to change? eBook

Harold Newman is a staff member of a research institute working on the theory and practice of business organization. His next assignment, analysing a change management project at the KSV Ltd., promises to be no major challenge. But in its course, he comes to realize that all of his beliefs and insights into successful change management are ready for the spoil heap. Harold learns a new lesson: change management comes with strings attached. It is studded with so many pitfalls and caught up in a tangled web of interdependencies and hidden forces that the common manuals and recipes have only limited meaning in real life. Rather, the success or failure of change seems determined by the interplay of corporate cultures and leadership styles, values and convictions, structures and role concepts. While Harold gets drawn more and more into the project, his own research institute becomes the plaything of the same forces – even though its people should know better. We know much about organizations when it comes to science. And yet we seem to know almost nothing when it comes to our daily experience. To Change Or Not To Change is an attempt to re-establish the lost link. The book offers a social sciences approach to organizations, building upon the complexity and irrationality of every day practice. It reveals the hidden traps of change management and offers an ironic way for better survival.