Organization Development Fundamentals: Managing Strategic Change

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Introduction

William J. Rothwell

“Change is the only constant.”

—Heraclitus, Greek philosopher

This chapter introduces the concepts of organization development and change management. Further, it:

• defines the terms change management (CM) and organization development (OD)

• explains why CM and OD are important

• describes the history of OD and CM.

Defining Change Management

Change management can have many different possible meanings. For some people it means managing expectations about change. For other people it refers to managing communication during an organizational change process. But in common use, change management usually has three distinctive ...