Testing times for the implementation of curriculum change: Analysis and extension of a curriculum change model

School curriculum change processes have traditionally been managed internally. However, in Queensland, Australia, as a response to the current high-stakes accountability regime, more and more principals are outsourcing this work to external change agents (ECAs). In 2009, one of the authors (a university lecturer and ECA) developed a curriculum change model (the Controlled Rapid Approach to Curriculum Change (CRACC)), specifically outlining the involvement of an ECA in the initiation phase of a school’s curriculum change process. The purpose of this paper is to extend the CRACC model by unpacking the implementation phase, drawing on data from a pilot study of a single school. Interview responses revealed that during the implementation phase, teachers wanted to be kept informed of the wider educational context; use data to constantly track students; relate pedagogical practices to testing practices; share information between departments and professional levels; and, own whole school performance. It is suggested that the findings would be transferable to other school settings and internal leadership of curriculum change. The paper also strikes a chord of concern – Do the responses from teachers operating in such an accountability regime live their professional lives within this corporate and globalised ideology whether they want to or not?

A stress and coping approach to organisational change: Evidence from three field studies

In this paper, a stress and coping perspective is used to outline the processes that determine employee adaptation to organisational change. A theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the effects of event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies, and coping resources is reviewed. Three empirical investigations of organisational change that have tested various components of the model are then presented. In the first study, there was evidence linking event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies and coping resources to levels of employee adjustment in a sample of pilots employed in a newly merged airline company. In a more focused test of the model with a sample of employees experiencing a restructuring process in their organisation it was found that the provision of change-related information enhanced levels of efficacy to deal with the change process which, in turn, predicted psychological wellbeing, client engagement, and job satisfaction. In a study of managers affected by a new remuneration scheme, there was evidence to suggest that managers who received change-specific information and opportunities to participate in the change process reported higher levels of change readiness. Managers who reported higher levels of readiness for change also reported higher levels of psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. These studies highlight ways in which managers and change agents can help employees to cope during times of organisational change.

Graduate education for leadership and organisational change in sustainable development

This paper reflects on the motivation, method and effectiveness of teaching leadership and organisational change to graduate engineers. Delivering progress towards sustainable development requires engineers who are aware of pressing global issues (such as resource depletion, climate change, social inequity and an interdependent economy) since it is they who deliver the goods and services that underpin society within these constraints. They also must understand how to implement change in the organisations within which they will work. In recognition of this fact the Cambridge University MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development has focussed on educating engineers to become effective change agents in their professional field with the confidence to challenge orthodoxy in adopting traditional engineering solutions. This paper reflects on ten years of delivering a special module to review how teaching change management and leadership aspects of the programme have evolved and progressed over that time. As the students who embark on this professional practice have often extensive experience as practising engineers and scientists, many have already learned the limitations of their technical background when solving complex problems. Students often join the course recognising their need to broaden their knowledge of relevant cross-disciplinary skills. The programme offers an opportunity for these early to mid-career engineers to explore an ethical and value-based approach to bringing about effective change in their particular sectors and organisations. This is achieved through action learning assignments in combination with reflections on the theory of change to enable students to equip themselves with tools that help them to be effective in making their professional and personal life choices. This paper draws on feedback gathered from students during their participation on the programme and augments this with alumni reflections gathered some years after their graduation. These professionals are able to look back on their experience of the taught components and reflect on how they have been able to apply this key learning in their subsequent careers. Copyright © 2012 September.

Implementation of hospital-wide computer information system :a case study of this change process

This case study examines the impact of a computer information system as it was being implemented in one Ontario hospital. The attitudes of a cross section of the hospital staff acted as a barometer to measure their perceptions of the implementation process. With The Mississauga Hospital in the early stages of an extensive computer implementation project, the opportunity existed to identify staff attitudes about the computer system, overall knowledge and compare the findings with the literature. The goal of the study was to develop a greater base about the affective domain in the relationship between people and the computer system. Eight exploratory questions shaped the focus of the investigation. Data were collected from three sources: a survey questionnaire, focused interviews, and internal hospital documents. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed. Instrumentation in the study consisted of a survey distributed at two points in time to randomly selected hospital employees who represented all staff levels.Other sources of data included hospital documents, and twenty-five focused interviews with staff who replied to both surveys. Leavitt's socio-technical system, with its four subsystems: task, structure, technology, and people was used to classify staff responses to the research questions. The study findings revealed that the majority of respondents felt positive about using the computer as part of their jobs. No apparent correlations were found between sex, age, or staff group and feelings about using the computer. Differences in attitudes, and attitude changes were found in potential relationship to the element of time. Another difference was found in staff group and perception of being involved in the decision making process. These findings and other evidence about the role of change agents in this change process help to emphasize that planning change is one thing, managing the transition is another.

Les pilotes comme agents de changement dans les télécentres communautaires au Mali

Cette thèse porte sur les processus de sélection, formation et encadrement (SFE) des gestionnaires, appelés pilotes et considérés comme agents de changement dans les télécentres communautaires au Mali. Ces processus sont étudiés sous l'angle de leur contribution positive ou négative à l'implantation et au développement de ces centres. Les projets "technologies de l’information et de la communication", initiés par les partenaires techniques et financiers, répondent au besoin des autorités maliennes préoccupées par un souci de connecter les 703 communes du pays. À la suite du sommet mondial sur la société de l’information en décembre 2003 à Genève, l’UNESCO et la Coopération suisse ont décidé d’installer des centres multimédias communautaires dans trois pays d’Afrique (Mali, Mozambique, Sénégal). Ces implantations de télécentres ont été réalisées sur le modèle de ce qui avait été fait en Asie sans tenir compte des besoins réels des bénéficiaires et des conditions particulières (économiques, politiques, culturelles) des sites d’implantation. Malgré les conditions parfois difficiles de l’Afrique, les populations témoignent un enthousiasme réel pour les technologies de communication. Les TIC ont connu une croissance considérable et se sont multipliées partout en Afrique, à des degrés divers. Néanmoins, elles n’ont pas encore atteint la majorité des populations africaines, car 70% de celles-ci vivent en zones rurales souvent marginalisées par les difficultés économiques. Après l’implantation des télécentres, les sites ont donc été confrontés à la difficile tâche de sélectionner les pilotes comme agents de changement. Les responsables chargés de la mise en œuvre des projets ont choisi les pilotes dans leur réseau familial. En ce sens, la thèse met l’accent sur l’importance du rôle d’un pilote dans un télécentre et l’appui qu’il peut générer dans la population bénéficiaire. Nous proposons un modèle qui part de l’action des agents de changement, et ce, afin de potentiellement susciter une prise de conscience chez les décideurs locaux. Nous avons fait une étude de cas sur quatre sites pour mieux connaître les processus de sélection, formation et encadrement des pilotes et nous avons tenté d'identifier les facteurs qui, dans ces processus, ont pu influencer le niveau de réussite de chacun de ces centres.

A model to enable organisational cultural change using systemic strategic human resource management

Cultural change in organisations is both difficult to implement and hard to achieve. In this paper, theory from strategic human resource management, organisational cultural change, systemic thinking and practice, and punctuated equilibrium, is integrated in order to build a model for organisational culture change. Evidence is provided showing the capacity of the model to enable researchers and organisational change agents to improve the success of organisational cultural change programs.

Change implementers’ resistance : considering power and resistance in IT implementation projects

Resistance is normally characterized as a set of behaviours located in and belonging to change recipients. Such behaviours are seen to thwart the legitimate aims of both change strategists and the change agents who implement systems and the associated organisational change on the strategists' behalf. However, results from our case study research indicate that resistance can be a property not only of change recipients’ behaviour, but also of change agents and change strategists. The resistance behaviours identified included the failure to follow a prescribed corporate method and template, a refusal to help or listen, a refusal to fix known problems, the display of an adversarial, confrontational, and/or condescending attitude, subversiveness, a poor work ethic, and a refusal to meet requests. This paper argues for a revised conceptualization of resistance as a behaviour that can be demonstrated by any IT project stakeholders, that cannot be divorced from considerations of power in the IT project context.

Organisational change : development and transformation

Change Management is a crucial process for gaining the competitive advantage that is the goal of many organisations. This 5th edition of Organisational Change: Development and Transformation has been comprehensively revised to fully explain change management from the perspectives of organisational development and organisational transformation. Leaders and change agents are often faced with conflicting callenges of motivating and understanding increasingly diverse workforces, accounting to stakeholders and planning for the future in a chaotic environment. Comprising 12 chapters in 6 parts, the text opens with an explanation of the environment of change faced by organisations today. It then deals with managing organisational development, which is a planned process of change which is often subject to the incursions of organisational transformation, a more dramatic and unpredictable type of change. With the field of organisation change continuing to evolve, especially in an international context, future directions of change management are also discussed. Finally, to emphasise the relationship between theory to practice, Organisational Change: Development and Transformation 5e provides 10 new local and international case studies and a suite of online cases supported by a case matrix. Case studies, exercises and support material present the challenges of change management in a real-life manner – examining issues from a variety of viewpoints.

A realist review of interventions and strategies to promote evidence-informed healthcare: a focus on change agency

Background
Change agency in its various forms is one intervention aimed at improving the effectiveness of the uptake of evidence. Facilitators, knowledge brokers and opinion leaders are examples of change agency strategies used to promote knowledge utilization. This review adopts a realist approach and addresses the following question: What change agency characteristics work, for whom do they work, in what circumstances and why?

Methods
The literature reviewed spanned the period 1997-2007. Change agency was operationalized as roles that are aimed at effecting successful change in individuals and organizations. A theoretical framework, developed through stakeholder consultation formed the basis for a search for relevant literature. Team members, working in sub groups, independently themed the data and developed chains of inference to form a series of hypotheses regarding change agency and the role of change agency in knowledge use.

Results
24, 478 electronic references were initially returned from search strategies. Preliminary screening of the article titles reduced the list of potentially relevant papers to 196. A review of full document versions of potentially relevant papers resulted in a final list of 52 papers. The findings add to the knowledge of change agency as they raise issues pertaining to how change agents’ function, how individual change agent characteristics effect evidence-informed health care, the influence of interaction between the change agent and the setting and the overall effect of change agency on knowledge utilization. Particular issues are raised such as how accessibility of the change agent, their cultural compatibility and their attitude mediate overall effectiveness. Findings also indicate the importance of promoting reflection on practice and role modeling. The findings of this study are limited by the complexity and diversity of the change agency literature, poor indexing of literature and a lack of theory-driven approaches.

Conclusion
This is the first realist review of change agency. Though effectiveness evidence is weak, change agent roles are evolving, as is the literature, which requires more detailed description of interventions, outcomes measures, the context, intensity, and levels at which interventions are implemented in order to understand how change agent interventions effect evidence-informed health care.

A stress and coping approach to organisational change: Evidence from three field studies

In this paper, a stress and coping perspective is used to outline the processes that determine employee adaptation to organisational change. A theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the effects of event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies, and coping resources is reviewed, Three empirical investigations of organisational change that have tested various components of the model are then presented. In the first study, there was evidence linking event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies and coping resources to levels of employee adjustment in a sample of pilots employed in a newly merged airline company. In a more focused test of the model with a sample of employees experiencing a restructuring process in their Organisation it was found that the provision of change-related information enhanced levels of efficacy to deal with the change process which, in turn, predicted psychological wellbeing, client engagement, and job satisfaction. In a study of managers affected by a new remuneration scheme, there was evidence to suggest that managers who received change-specific information and opportunities to participate in the change process reported higher levels of change readiness. Managers who reported higher levels of readiness for change also reported higher levels of psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. These studies highlight ways in which managers and change agents can help employees to cope during times of organisational change.

Enabling change for corporate sustainability: An integrated perspective

This article explores the processes of change that enable corporations to move towards sustainable practices, focusing on the human resource and business strategies that support rather than diminish global ecology and human/social capabilities. We argue that this unified approach is necessary to bring about a change in the interpretation of corporate sustainability and to support the activities of change agents (managers, consultants, and community activists) in managing the massive corporate change needed to move corporations toward sustainable practices in a systematic way. We propose a schema in the form of an integrated phase model for understanding how corporations move from compliance modes to the attainment of strategic sustainability and beyond to the ‘ideal’ or sustaining corporation. We discuss the leadership of change and the roles and strategies that corporate change agents can employ to bring about both incremental and transformational change for sustainability.

Human resource strategy:introducing a new management typology to make change stick

Human resource management (HRM) is now being seen as a strategic activity. This recognises that change processes must include the management of human resources as part of an integrated approach to strategy. Without also linking management development and business strategy, change will not stick and organisations will not develop. Contributing to the debate about integrating HR and other strategies, including linking management development and business strategy, this paper develops a new Generic Management Typology of co-existing management philosophies in order to help change agents diagnose the culture of an organisation and to modify that culture. The typology is derived from reflecting on research about the global transformation of public service organisations over the last twenty-five years.

Organizational change and development in India:a case of strategic organizational change and transformation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine developments in the field of organizational change (OC) with reference to the context of India. It highlights the need to analyze this topic in the present Indian economic environment and discusses the main developments reported in the Indian literature on the same. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical evidence based on a qualitative analysis of a case study undertaken at a public-private partnership transformation at North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) in India is presented. Findings – The findings focus on trust building and belongingness for the employees, establishing a high-performance orientation, quality improvements, and the resultant transformations at NDPL. The analysis indicates a number of ways by which NDPL sought to improve its efficiency in order to better adapt to the rapidly changing Indian business environment. Practical implications – Based on the findings, the paper identifies key messages for policy makers and change agents regarding how to transform companies in the rapidly changing business contexts of emerging markets such as India. Originality/value – The paper offers an in-depth analysis of OC practices in a large organization in India.

Understanding Contradictions in Times of Change: A CHAT Analysis in an Art Museum

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Organisational change : development & transformation

Change Management is a crucial process for gaining the competitive advantage that is the goal of many organisations. Leaders and change agents are often faced with conflicting challenges of motivating and understanding increasingly diverse workforces, accounting to stakeholders and planning for the future in a chaotic environment. Comprising 12 chapters in 6 parts, the text opens with an explanation of the environment of change faced by organisations today. It then deals with managing organisational development, which is a planned process of change which is often subject to the incursions of organisational transformation, a more dramatic and unpredictable type of change. With the field of organisational change continuing to evolve, especially in an international context, future directions of change management are also discussed. Finally, to emphasise the relationship between theory to practice, Organisational Change: Development and Transformation 6e provides 10 local and international case studies and a suite of online cases supported by a case matrix. Case studies, exercises and support material present the challenges of change management in a real-life manner – examining issues from a variety of viewpoints.