ABSTRACT
For several decades, leaders in charge of organizations as well as institutions have faced profound changes. They have learned that their individual and collective roles must change and that it is no longer necessary to justify the need for change. Organizations and institutions have implemented "actions for change" and have mobilized considerable energy in finding and applying solutions. In retrospect, they can realize that the solutions they have chosen have themselves become problematic. To take into account the existential dynamics of human systems is characteristic of institutional transformation (IT). In order to introduce this programme, the chapter focuses the three main strands of IT: psychoanalytical approach, systemic approach, and learning from experience. Institutional transformation is concerned with the whole organization being in interaction with its environment, as well as with each of its components, which are also interacting with each other. The psychoanalytic approach, enriched by an understanding of systems—organizations and institutions being systems—focuses on the various dimensions of reality.
