A practitioner’s view of the evolution of change management

Abstract

Change management is an important discipline. It is an essential component of any modern organisation’s capabilities. Businesses without a change management capability struggle to respond to the need to change. This need derives from the ever-present progress of technology, social and environmental change as well as competitive pressures.
Change management has an interesting and unusual relationship between the academics studying it, and the change management practitioners working in businesses and other organisations. Unlike many other management disciplines, change management’s origins lie in academic research, academic theories and the development of theoretical models of how change occurs.
Nevertheless, there is often a gap between academia and practising Change Managers. This is a pity as there is an ongoing need for good research to back up the development of the change management profession. This paper reflects on the evolution of change management and concludes with suggestions on areas where future research could be of value. These include better ways to measure the value of change management and improvements to one of the most common change management tools – the change curve.