Building an organizational change communication theory

The difficulty of communicating during organizational change has intensified with the prevalence of continuously changing organizations (Buchanan, Claydon & Doyle, 1999). The difficulty faced by managers is compounded by the lack of studies examining organizational communication within a context of organizational change (Eisenberg, Andrews, Murphy, & Laine-Timmerman, 1999; Lewis & Seibold, 1996). Not surprisingly then, is there a paucity of organizational change theory to guide further research and practitioners. This paper addresses the lack of organizational change communication research and contributes to theoretical development of communication during organizational change. A model of change communication during continuous change is presented from the analysis of two longitudinal empirical studies. Central constructs of the model are the monologic change communication, the dialogic change communication and the background talk of change. Further Van de Ven and Poole's (1995) Process Theories of Change are extended to consider the sequencing of the three constructs. The findings suggest that the sequencing of the dominant change communication approaches is informed by an alignment of individual communication competences and organizational change communication expectations.

Extending conceptual models for Web based applications

The next phase envisioned for the World Wide Web is automated ad-hoc interaction between intelligent agents, web services, databases and semantic web enabled applications. Although at present this appears to be a distant objective, there are practical steps that can be taken to advance the vision. We propose an extension to classical conceptual models to allow the definition of application components in terms of public standards and explicit semantics, thus building into web-based applications, the foundation for shared understanding and interoperability. The use of external definitions and the need to store outsourced type information internally, brings to light the issue of object identity in a global environment, where object instances may be identified by multiple externally controlled identification schemes. We illustrate how traditional conceptual models may be augmented to recognise and deal with multiple identities.

Testing a framework for the quality of process models: A case study

Process modeling can be regarded as the currently most popular form of conceptual modeling. Research evidence illustrates how process modeling is applied across the different information system life cycle phases for a range of different applications, such as configuration of Enterprise Systems, workflow management, or software development. However, a detailed discussion of critical factors of the quality of process models is still missing. This paper proposes a framework consisting of six quality factors, which is derived from a comprehensive literature review. It then presents in a case study, a utility provider, who had designed various business process models for the selection of an Enterprise System. The paper summarizes potential means of conducting a successful process modeling initiative and evaluates the described modeling approach within the Guidelines of Modeling (GoM) framework. An outlook shows the potential lessons learnt, and concludes with insights to the next phases of this study.