Organizational Change Models: A Comparison

Over years the business philosophies have changed and so have the ways in which businesses were conducted in the past. This has led to change in the processes, procedures and evolution of cultures across globe. As ever, culture has remained pivotal in facilitating the process of change. Understanding the right ingredients of culture and leveraging on them to foster change process is a sure formula for success, however, not too many organizations have done it successfully in the past. Even as we enter the 21st century and feel the need to adopt new business measures for instituting efficient business practices, we walk into a world that brings along with it the need to change, need to be flexible, open and receptive to the whole process of change. In wake of this, the paper discusses various change models that have evolved over time. These change models have been instrumental in successful implementation of change processes across organizations; however, caution must be exercised with the use of change models, as the line distinguishing one model of change from the other is apparently very thin. The paper endeavors to use Van de Ven & Poole (1995) framework to assess different models and clearly lists out the parameters that can be used for analyzing and comparing various change models. The model has been mentioned in details by "Weick and Quinn" in their book titled "Organizational Change and Development". The paper includes analysis of 15 change models each of it analyzed on different parameters such as organization type that it suits the most, the factors facilitating and necessitating change under various models, the strategy for change for different models and finally the actors involved in the change process for the change models in question.