cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The underpinning theorySUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS• It is useful to understand our own assumptions about managingchange, in order to challenge them and examine the possibilitiesoffered by different assumptions. It is useful to compare our ownassumptions with the assumptions of others with whom we work.This increased understanding can often reduce frustration.• Gareth’s Morgan’s work on organizational metaphors provides auseful way of looking at the range of assumptions that exist abouthow organizations work.• The four most commonly used organizational metaphors are:– the machine metaphor;– the political metaphor;– the organism metaphor;– the flux and transformation metaphor.• The machine metaphor is deeply ingrained in our ideas about howorganizations run, so tends to inform many of the well-knownapproaches to organizational change, particularly project management,and planning oriented approaches.• Models of organizations as open, interconnected, interdependentsub-systems sit within the organism metaphor. This model is veryprevalent in the human resource world, as it underpins much of thethinking that drove the creation of the HR function in organizations.The organism metaphor views change as a process ofadapting to changes in the environment. The focus is on designinginterventions to decrease resistance to change, and increase theforces for change.• The political map of organizational life is recognized by many of thekey writers on organizational change as highly significant.• The metaphor of flux and transformation appears to model the truecomplexity of how change really happens. If we use this lens toview organizational life it does not lead to neat formulae, or concisehow-to approaches. There is less certainty to inform our actions.This can be on the one hand a great relief, and on the other handquite frustrating.134