Managing Change Enquiry and Action

□ Introduction

In this concluding chapter we revisit the enquiry–action framework in the light of the ideas, techniques and cases that have been discussed. We explore how the framework can be used in leading and managing planned and unplanned change and we consider how the separate practices of the framework can be integrated.

Lewin's strength was to take the theoretical research position and work towards practical outcomes and this approach illustrated the interdependence between theory and practice.

□Change as flux

Fineman, Sims and Gabriel (2005) introduce the metaphor of a river as a way of thinking about organisations, or, rather, the set of practices that constitute organising. This relates to a perspective on organisations as being in flux (Chia, 1995), as actors act, interact and react within a socio-economic climate that is typically changeable. In some senses, this may appear to be unsettling, as we never reach the ‘refreezing’ part of Kurt Lewin's (1947) model of change (unfreeze, change, refreeze), and hence there is never a finished conclusion or a point at which we can objectively say that a change was a success or a failure. Although this might be disconcerting, we see it as being of more practical help than the traditional way of thinking about organisations as objects, machines or closed systems (Marshak, 2009). There is constant motion but, at the same time, an identity and a set of meanings that are conserved over time. Viewed by a swimmer in the river, it is a place of constant change. Viewed by a cartographer on a series of maps drawn over time, it is an incrementally changing feature of the landscape. Hence, it is not only that there is a core of organising practices that remain the same over time and a periphery that changes. Rather, what changes, what is core and how these ideas are interpreted will vary from different perspectives (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). What might be significant ‘big scale’ change for some (Burnes, 2009) might be relatively modest re-emphasising for others. A change manager must be able to judge where and when to intervene and how to do so in a way that is productive.