Organizational Change Theories
A Synthesis
- Christiane Demers - HEC Montréal, Canada
"As Demers notes, organizational change is becoming a major field of research inquiry, encompassing an increasing diversity of theories. The three parts of the book place this topic in historical context, and reflect three key debates within the field: adaptation versus selection; transformation versus evolution; and natural evolution versus social dynamics."
—CHOICE
While there are thousands of books on change management that adopt a normative perspective and numerous conceptual works that present one author's perspective, this unique book offers a synthesis of major organizational change theories. Author Christiane Demers gives a unique guided tour of the field of organizational change providing readers with a historically framed, comprehensive synthesis of organizational change theories. Organizational Change Theories: A Synthesis exposes readers to the variety and richness of North American and European scholarly literature.
Key Features:
- Presents a historical framework: This historical perspective provides a comprehensive synthesis that situates different theoretical approaches and highlights their links over time.
- Covers literature from World War II to present day: A comparative summary of each period's important theories identifies the major dimensions, key concepts, and questions that characterize the different perspectives.
- Offers a balanced evaluation of each theoretical approach: By comparing each perspective in terms of major contributions and limits, students can develop their critical thinking skills.
- Provides a wide-range review of current literature: While the focus is historical, the book includes recent theoretical perspectives to offer an up-to-date review of emerging research and trends shaping the evolution of the field.
- Includes extensive references: A fantastic bibliographic resource for scholars and students to further investigate issues of change in organizations.
Intended Audience
This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Organizational Development, Organizational Theory, and Organizational Change in the departments of business & management, political science, and public administration. It is also an ideal resource for academics, researchers, and scholars interested in organizational change.
"Demers gives a unique guided tour of the field of organisational change providing readers with a historically framed, comprehensive synthesis of organisational change thoeries."
"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty collections."
"An outstanding review and synthesis of The Theoretical and empirical literature."
Too advanced for our students in present HRM-programme. We are renewing our programme and this text is still under consideration, but for 2017
As the course was rather practice-oriented, this book was ideal for students who wanted to learn more about theory.
This is a great little book that provides good coverage of diverse organisational change theories under one cover. The chronological order is a good idea for providing the overeaching narrative to the development of organisational change theories and the book itself. Very useful for giving chapters to students on particular aspects of change.
Succinctly addresses change theory in an approachable way.
Focused on theoretical works and empirical studies of many authors, the book offers a historical frame in understanding organizational change (not development). It comes mostly as a review/synthesis and is a very rich source of authors and literature in organizational change.
This is the best book we could find which summarises the different theories of change. It is really well written and should be very accessible for postgraduate students.
The book did not fit the course I was teaching, however, I promoted it at a conference where I conducted a workshop. The workshop content included how attendees could lead their organization to change so that it was more equitable.
Sage College Publishing
