The Politics of Organizational Change Routledge Focus on Business and Management Series

Politics is an aspect of everyday life within organizations, and is a force that inhibits individual and collective behaviour. If not fully understood, it can impede organizational change and development. In order to minimise the political aspects of organizational dynamics there is a need to understand the extent to which organizational culture brings about politicised conformance and how individuals shape their behaviour through self-interest to conform?sense-giving and sense-making nexus?thus moderating the degree of change initiatives.

The Politics of Organizational Change explores the relationship between self-interest, power, politics and managing organizational change from a theoretical perspective. It encourages the fundamental questioning of the relationship between self-interest, power and control inherent within organizational change, and discusses the attendant implications for managing change. It will be of value to those who require a text that goes beyond set patterns of coverage found in textbooks dealing with managing change.

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1. Self-Interest And Political Behaviour

The root of self-interest

Locus of power

Politicised behaviour within organizations

Maintaining position through political behaviour

2. Political Narratives Of Change

Organizational change narratives

Individual narratives

Mutually assured delusion

Moving into the "white space"

3. Illusion of Control

Power through politics: organizational and individual

The politics of resistance

Who controls and shapes change?

Political reorientation of psychological contracts

4. Implications For Managing Change

Realpolitik of change

The illusion of control

Politics, power and conflict

Rational emotional response to change

5. Managing The Political And Power Dynamic Of Change

Managing the unmanageable

The antitheses of political behaviour

From rhetoric to action: Shaping organizational political dynamics through polyarchic orientation

Index

Robert Price is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Change Management and Leadership at Suffolk Business School, University of Suffolk (UK), and is Chair of the Organizational Studies Track, British Academy of Management.