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

9Complex changeINTRODUCTIONSince the first edition of this book, some interesting new ideas have reallystarted to take hold in the world of organizational development. Ideas onunderstanding organizations using complexity science and the notion ofemergence rather than managed change are now being grasped andworked with by leaders and consultants alike. It is as though we areappreciating anew the possibility that not everything can be planned andcontrolled, and that even having a strong vision only gets you so far.Sometimes change happens in non-linear and chaotic ways, neitherbottom-up nor top-down, and whether you believe in fate, or the stars, orthe fundamentals of biology, or in the sheer randomness of life, one manor woman may really feel quite small in the face of it.In Chapter 3 on Organizational Change, we discussed the metaphor offlux and transformation and briefly explored the assumptions thatunderpin this view of organizations. The flux and transformationmetaphor could equally well be referred to as the complexity metaphor.Here, we explore this metaphor a bit further.This chapter looks at a range of different approaches to understandingand dealing with complex organizational change. The key headings are:310