Approaches to Organisational Change

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,8, Lancaster University, language: English, abstract: Organisations are part of a complex and erratic business world, which is in a continuous progress and change. Thus change has become a much debated topic and an inevitable aspect of organisational culture, with a lot of different approaches. The debatable thesis challenges Organizational Development (OD) in particular. But before discussing this any further, the thesis should be analysed a little closer. It is interesting to reflect, out of which perspective this statement was developed. It could be either from someone, who has a bird view on an organisation, or from an employee. It would be interesting to involve closer into the workforce perspective and to find out with the help of case studies, why OD was perceived as imposed change - if it was. However, this would go beyond the capacity of the essay. The following piece of work shall create an understanding for the underlying rationales of the statement 'OD is just ANOTHER attempt to IMPOSE change on the workforce'. Initially different forces of change and forms of resistance are presented. Later, different approaches on organisational change are considered with the main emphasis on OD and thereafter, a case study on the company Hilti is described, in order to demonstrate an OD process. In the end, the arising issues regarding the thesis will be summarized after a short review, and a conclusion will be drawn. [...]