International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Change is fundamental to organizing. To organize, or structure human activity intentionally to achieve collective goals, is in itself a change process – a movement from one state of being to another. A change process in the context of formal organizations may be defined as a sequence of events by which alteration occurs in the structure and/or functioning of an organization. Alternatively, it may be seen as the way in which difference(s) emerge between two (or more) successive conditions, states, or moments of time in an organization ( Ford & Ford 1995 ). As implied by these definitions, organizational change processes can be all-encompassing in scope, but scholarly attention is typically devoted to large-scale planned changes, such as restructuring, mergers, or implementation of major new management methods or information technology. Transcending the traditional concerns of innovation research, the study of change-related communication (CRC) considers how planned changes are adopted and implemented and how change-oriented discourse can infuse organizational interactions and messages. Organizational change processes have been of interest to → organizational communication scholars from the early days of the discipline's formation. In a historical overview of organizational communication research, Redding (1988 , 45) cited several early publications that in one way or another ... log in or subscribe to read full text