ABSTRACT
There are a number of matters which will be discussed in this main section. We will begin by distinguishing between what is meant by ‘change’ and ‘changing’; this is followed by an overview of ‘strategic’ or, as it is sometimes called, ‘planned’ change and some of the ways in which such change can begin. The foregoing necessarily draws upon a consideration of Organization Development (OD), and so something will be said here about the nature of OD, before addressing some of the main problems associated with this perspective on organizational change. Following this critique, the narrative moves away from OD to consider alternative frameworks for studying organizational change, labelled ‘emergent’ or ‘processualcontextual’. On the basis of this discussion of OD and organizational change, the narrative then turns to an examination of the people who take on a responsibility for change within organizations (‘change agents’).
