ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the following questions: How does clarifying the influence of disciplines, fields and subfields inform studies of organizational change? How can different approaches to studying organizational change be differentiated? How has research informed organizational change studies? What would be the milestones in a critical chronology of organizational change? What perspective does critical management studies and critical leadership studies offer? Accounts of organizational change often appear prescriptive, even evangelical. Consequently, research plays an important role in academic studies of organizational change. A strength of the critical approach is highlighting the centrality of power, ideology clashes and contradictions inherent in organizational change. The weakness is that all organizational change is explained through power or the favoured ideology of the critical scholar at the expense of other explanations. One reason for critiquing organizational change is its role in privileging the interests of the few over the many.
