The Use of Multiple Means of Change and Its Outcomes

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a small portion of the organizational improvement process. Studying the organizational improvement process encompasses such basic areas as (1) stimuli to change, i.e., things or events might lead initiation of the organizational improvement programs, (2) desired outcomes from the process, (3) the means or levers of change, (4) the implementation process of change, and (5) the actual outcomes of change(Quinn and Howes, 1977 ; Shirley, Peters, and El-Ansary, 1976). This paper deals with how the means or levers of change, the third area, and the actual outcomes of change, the last one. More specifically, it is concerned with the managerial practices of using combinations of (or multiple) means of change and their outcomes. The means or levers of change refer to the variables that managers use in initiating a change; the actual outcomes of change to the changes in the outcome variables that occur as a result of the implementation of the change(Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971:319). Much has been written on the means or levers of change (Bartlett and Kayser, 1973; Howes, 1974; Leavitt, 1964; Quinn, 1978); many reported the results of case studies which involved multiple means of change (Adler and Goleman 1975; Huse and Beer, 1971; Nadler and Pecorella, 1975). But no in-depth study has been undertaken on the use of combinations of the means of change which tend to be manipulated together in a change and on its outcomes.