The Social Psychology of Change Management

2  Model and Methodology

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

—Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677, Epistles)

Introduction

To unleash the change management potential of social psychology, we have selected defining theories and models from the field of social psychology. Social psychology can be defined as the science explaining how people influence other people. Fiske (2004) points to the classic definition of Gordon Allport, one of social psychology’s pioneers: “Social psychology is the scientific attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings” (in: Allport ...