International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Change management in the context of organizations is the process of planning, directing, and controlling a transition from one set of organizational conditions to another. Change management has been studied for many years in the management and organization studies disciplines. It has not traditionally been considered a communication process, although models of change management typically have included communication as a component of effective change management (→  Organizational Communication ; Strategic Communication ). However, several related trends have led to change management and communication becoming much more closely interrelated. First, the rate of organizational change has increased, as has the perceived importance of changing organizations to managers, executives, and other stakeholders ( Zorn et al. 1999 ). The result of this is that organizational reputation is greatly influenced by the appearance of keeping up with the latest trends, as captured in organizational buzzwords such as benchmarking, continuous improvement, and best practice. Second, as a result of the massive failure rate of major organizational change initiatives (a 50–80 percent failure rate is typically reported in the literature), practitioners and scholars have given significant attention to rethinking the process of change management and the reasons underlying failure. In particular, there is a ... log in or subscribe to read full text