ABSTRACT
Within the public sector the rationale for strategic change is often directly linked to abrupt and predominantly exogenous jolts such as changed policies or legislation, technological change, management replacements, or reorganizations such as the merger or break-up of public agencies. Whenever this is the case, an organization requires decisive and large-scale strategic change to regain congruence between the organization's goals, the environment and the organization. In these instances, public sector organizations have a tendency to adopt a top-down strategic management-inspired approach to generating change (Ferlie et al., 1996). The popularity of New Public Management, and especially the associated ideology of ‘managerialism’, has strengthened the trend of change being initiated and led from the top (Diefenbach, 2007; Ferlie et al., 1996; Hood, 1991). Basically, the senior management team perceive themselves as being in the best position to initiate and implement quick and purposeful organizational change. Besides, they are considered to have the means and the position to work from a system-wide perspective that does not reflect functional or departmental biases (Conger, 2000; Jensen, 2000). However, from an organization development (OD) point of view a bottom-up approach with full participation and active involvement of all employees is seen as essential to generate commitment and ensure that the strategic reorientation actually is realized (Beer, 2000; Bennis, 2000; Cummings and Worley, 2005). Therefore, OD is being used more and more in strategic change initiatives in public sector organizations (Robertson and Seneviratne, 1995; Ferlie et al., 1996; Patchett, 2005; Teo and Crawford, 2005). A combination of both approaches seems to be ideal for the public sector, but pulling off the change is not an easy matter, as a number of case studies have already shown (Bate et al., 2000; O'Brien, 2002; Balogun and Hailey, 2004; Beer, 2001; Burnes, 2004b ).
