17
Towards an Integration of Stage Theories of Planned Organizational Change
17.1 Introduction
The management of planned change has been reported as CEOs’ most central concern in managing their companies (Conference Board, 2010; Van de Ven et al., 1989). Scholars and consultants have jumped to provide prescriptions with little or no supporting evidence. Innovation requires more than creative capacities to invent new ideas; it requires managerial skills to transform good ideas into practice. The specific skills required to manage the process of innovation remain underdeveloped (Burke, 2004). A road map indicating how and why planned change unfolds and what paths are likely to lead to success or failure is vital in today’s rapidly-changing world. Micklethwait & Wooldridge (1996) sharply criticized management theory for being incapable of self-criticism, for having confusing terminology, for rarely rising above common sense, and for being faddish and bedeviled by contradictions that would not be allowed in more-rigorous disciplines.
17.2 Stage Theories of Change
Since the second half of the 20th century, a series of scholars and researchers in organizational-change theory have used the stage paradigm. Lewin (1951) was the first to develop core notions about the dynamics of the change process within organizations and put forth a stage model of planned change. Lewin theorized that in an organization, any given stable state is a quasistationary ...
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