Managing Organizational Change, by Palmer/Dunford/Akin, provides managers with an awareness of the issues involved in managing change, moving them beyond "one-best way" approaches and providing them with access to multiple perspectives that they can draw upon in order to enhance their success in producing organizational change. These multiple perspectives provide a theme for the text as well as a framework for the way each chapter outlines different options open to managers in helping them to identify, in a reflective way, the actions and choices open to them. The authors favor using multiple perspectives to ensure that change managers are not trapped by a "one-best way" of approaching change which limits their options for action. Changing organizations is as messy as it is exhilarating, as frustrating as it is satisfying, as muddling-through and creative a process as it is a rational one. This book recognizes these tensions for those involved in managing organizational change. Rather than pretend that they do not exist it confronts them head on, identifying why they are there, how they can be managed and the limits they create for what the manager of organizational change can achieve. Salient Features Chapter Two outlines 6 dominant images and challenges managers of change to identify their own "in-use" images of change and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Chapter Four focuses on what kinds of changes occur in organizations, particularly downsizing and restructuring changes, technological changes, and mergers and acquisitions - the most common types of changes that change managers are likely to experience. The chapter identifies key issues and challenges associated with each, and outlines how for some organizations these changes are strategic and proactive whereas for others they are reactive. Chapter Five outlines a number of "macro" models and techniques for mapping and assessing where changes are needed in an organization, which direct attention to areas like organizational structure, strategy, management skills and styles, communication patterns, reward mechanisms, decision-making procedures, and human resource and cultural modes of interaction. It also outlines other more "micro" tools such as force-field analyses, gap analyses, stakeholder analyses and news-reporter techniques. Chapter Six delves into understanding why people may resist change along with techniques that change managers can use to counteract such responses. Chapters Seven & Eight guide the change manager through six central approaches to implementing change - organization development, appreciative inquiry, sense-making, change management, contingency and political/processual approaches.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction: Stories of Change Chapter 2 Images of Managing Change Chapter 3 Why Organizations Change Chapter 4 What Changes in Organizations Chapter 5 Diagnosis for Change Chapter 6 Resistance to Change Chapter 7 Implementing Change: Organization Development, Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Organizational Scholarship, and Sense-making Approaches Chapter 8 Implementing Change: Change Management, Contingency, and Processual Approaches Chapter 9 Linking Vision and Change Chapter 10 Strategies for Communicating Change Chapter 11 Skills for Communicating Change Chapter 12 Sustaining Change Index