ABSTRACT
The question, ‘How do we go about changing complex organizations?’ often means ‘How can we formulate intentions and communicate them as agreed plans of action to be implemented?’ In other words, it involves conceiving a future different in some way from a conception of the past and taking action to realize the change. The focus is then often on providing tools to help produce conceptions of both the content and the process of change – survey instruments, diagnostic and strategic frameworks, system models, visioning aids, simulations, planning tools, interactive technologies, process designs and change methodologies. Such books on organizational change help us with tools for giving birth to our ideas about what and how to change. They help us to step back and frame a view of ourselves in our situation with all the material, technological, cultural and political factors that we may need to take into account. They are tools to help us as participant-observers in organizational change. The more sophisticated tools help us frame views of ourselves in the very act of doing the framing, so that they become reflexive tools to help us as participant-conceptualizers.
