Organizational Change Management – Concepts Definitions and Approaches Inventory

Organizational change is a fact of life; it involves changes of organizations’ mission, vision and/or processes, with impact at both individual and organization level. Some organizations accept changes if they consider them as necessary and quickly adapt their behaviour in a desire new direction but in most cases changes are considered unnecessary or very difficult and organizations do not adapt to the new context defined by the turbulent environment in which they operates. Considering these, the goal of the present research is to provide an overview on organizational change processes by considering the operation level and different approaches described in the literature. In the first part of the article there will be described how organizations operate and are interconnected based on Morgan's organizational metaphors. This will clarify aspects related to organizations’ behaviour and will point out the advantages and limitations of different actions’ options. In the second part of the article, there will be presented an inventory of models on organizational change. This section aims to illustrate the variety of options when planning and design an organizational change process, in order to understand the assumptions, the benefits and limitations of each option. Finally, there will be presented relevant aspects of organizations’ functioning and methods of change, to underline the necessity of the change management strategy for organizations’ development.