Source: www.iienet2.org Change is Change is something that presses us out of our comfort zone.

It is destiny-filtered, heart grown, faith built. Change is inequitable; not a respecter of persons. Change is for the better or for the worst, depending on where you view it. Change has an adjustment period which varies on the individual. It is uncomfortable, for changing from one state to the next upsets our control over outcomes. Change has a ripping effect on those who wont let go. Flex is the key. Even a roller coaster ride can be fun if you know when to lean and create new balance within the change. Change is needed when all the props and practices of the past no longer work. Change is not comforted by the statement just hang in there but with the statement you can make it. We dont grow in retreat, but through endurance. Change isnt fixed by crying, worrying, or mental tread milling. Change is won by victors not victims; and that choice is ours. Change is awkward -- at first. Change is a muscle that develops to abundantly enjoy the dynamics of the life set before us. Change calls own strength beyond anyone of us. Change pushes you to do your personal best. Change draws out those poised for a new way. Change isnt for chickens. Change does have casualties of those defeated. Change will cause us to churn or to learn. Change changes the speed of time. Time is so slow for the reluctant, and yet it is a whirlwind for those who embrace it. Change is more fun to do than to be done to. Change seeks a better place at the end and is complete when you realize you are different. Change is measured by its impact on all who are connected to it. Change is charged when you are dissatisfied with where you are. Change doesnt look for a resting-place; just the next launching point. Change is only a waste to those who dont learn from it. Change happens in the heart before it is proclaimed by our works. Change chaps those moving slower than the change itself. If you can change before you have to change, there will be less pain. Change can flow or jerk, depending on our resistance to it. Change uses the power invested in the unseen to reinvent what is seen. Change is like driving in a fog you cant see very far, but you can make the whole trip that way. Change is here to stay.

Change Management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at empowering employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment.[1]. In project management, change management refers to a project management process where changes to a project are formally introduced and approved.[2]

[Edit] Examples of Organizational Change

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Missionary changes Strategic changes Operational changes (including Structural changes) Technological changes Changing the attitudes and behaviors of personnel

As a multidisciplinary practice that has evolved as a result of scholarly research, Organizational Change Management should begin with a systematic diagnosis of the current situation in order to determine both the need for change and the capability to change. The objectives, content, and process of change should all be specified as part of a Change Management plan. Change Management processes may include creative marketing to enable communication between change audiences, but also deep social understanding about leaderships styles and group dynamics. As a visible track on transformation projects, Organizational Change Management aligns groups expectations, communicates, integrates teams and manages people training. It makes use of performance metrics, such as financial results, operational efficiency, leadership commitment, communication effectiveness, and the perceived need for change to design appropriate strategies, in order to avoid change failures or solve troubled change projects. Successful change management is more likely to occur if the following are included: 1. Benefits management and realization to define measurable stakeholder aims, create a business case for their achievement (which should be continuously updated), and monitor assumptions, risks, dependencies, costs, return on investment, dis-benefits and cultural issues affecting the progress of the associated work. 2. Effective Communications that informs various stakeholders of the reasons for the change (why?), the benefits of successful implementation (what is in it for us, and you) as well as the details of the change (when? where? who is involved? how much will it cost? etc). 3. Devise an effective education, training and/or skills upgrading scheme for the organization. 4. Counter resistance from the employees of companies and align them to overall strategic direction of the organization. 5. Provide personal counseling (if required) to alleviate any change related fears. 6. Monitoring of the implementation and fine-tuning as required.

Change Management

Education leaders recognize the profound need to innovate in order to drive fundamental change within their organizations. Education executives must personally lead innovation, establishing conditions that ignite ideas and drive their execution. Not a "bandwagon" approach, but true transformational leadership. Managing transformation, creating a vision of teaming, major process changes, innovating technologies, implementing structures and networks, and establishing a participatory culture... these are all services which support your business in successfully achieving and sustaining major organizational change.
Change Management Challenges

How does your organization develop a change mindset? How does your organization align and key stakeholders around the goals of transformations?

What can your business do to increase the flexibility of your organization and align with business priorities? What is your strategy for tightly aligning processes, organizational and technological changes? How will you manage expectations and guide people through challenges that arise within your organization?

Organizational Change Capabilities

Change leadership: develop a culture for change. Change execution: help people and organizations overcome major changes. High-performance culture: recognize the importance of organizational culture as a key enabler of business performance. Value realization: build the business case to drive the change program. Problem leadership and governance: ensure focus, alignment, and execution discipline to achieve desired benefits on time and on budget. Organization design: align organizational structures and networks to delivery of business objectives. Stakeholders engagement and communications: identify, align and obtain commitment for change. Culture transformation: enhance organizational performance for increased productivity. Collaboration and partnering: enable organization innovation through highly beneficial relationships. Technology driven change management: align people with technology driven change.

Organizational change services provide the human focus that helps enable these benefits through managing all aspects required for achieving sustainable change. Our team has solid experience creating transformational change for clients and serving as trusted business advisors.
IT Strategy and E-Rate

Business and technology Integration are essential to innovation. Due unprecedented pace and breadth of technological change, school leaders have come to realize its strategic impact on all areas of the business.

to the district

The right technology strategy is also an opportunity for organizational change and improvement. From consolidating physical offices into virtual ones; to customer insights that drive product and brand extensions; to spotting emerging trends that competitors miss; business and technology integration are of tremendous importance for optimum growth and profit.

Our technology strategy consultants provide the intersection of business and technology, supporting our clients in enhancing competitiveness and creating new sources of economic value from technology. Our consultants work with CIOs and their peers, seeking to close the gap between business and information technology. The ALLFON technology strategy practice is leader in innovative technologies and IT strategy. Our consultants have demonstrated experience creating value for clients and serving as trusted business advisors. ALLFON, LLC can bring value to your organization through the unmatched worldwide capabilities, relationships and experience which is ALLFON.
Performance Management

Today, modern enterprises understand that using data to derive insight is more than operational reporting and financial roll-ups. Today, data is transformed into insight and delivered at the point of need, Information is delivered on demand in right-time, in formats that enable business leaders to act in ways that are beneficial to the business and optimize performance. In this environment, data transcends its transactional role to become a key strategic enabler of an enterprise's performance and success. Ongoing strategic planning keeps successful educational organizations at the top. But strategy, not matter how well-defined, does not deliver value until it's deployed.

Education Sector
Improving business strategy across an organization requires the continuous analysis of operational detail, assessment and management of risk, and refinement of metrics. Performancefocused organizations can respond more quickly to changes from internal or external factors. In addition, performance-focused organizations create a better environment for Innovation. How can those strategic initiatives be connected to operations and subsequent business results?
An Integrated Approach to Performance Management

ALLFON's(D3MS)Data Driven Making Solution helps organizations develop metrics,processes and tools that link business strategy to identified performance management goals.D3MS can help you analyze processes and create transparency and accountability. Further it can give you the means to track progress, forecast performance more accurately and help you change course smoothly when needed to support your strategic goals. A performance-focused culture also provides an opportunity to improve your return on innovation and reward top performers. ALLFON's D3MS solution can assist as your organization moves to:

Shift the focus from "doing the same with less" to "doing it better and cheaper". Transform more traditionally tactical departments, such as finance and operations, into strategic contributors. Create a more cohesive workforce through clarified roles and responsibilities coupled with performance measurements.

Where Business Insight Meets the Real-World Challenges of Education

ALLFON aligns strategic planning with your daily operations. Our D3MS offering provides:

Focused attention on total enterprise performance improvement - From test scores, to program spendingm, to IT spending, our solution accounts for and assesses performance across the enterprise. Visible operational insight - Access the data you need to make informed decisions, including timely performances metrics, cyclic and data consolidation details, and security and audit trails. Improved performances and efficiencies - Streamline every level of your organizational with targeted performance evaluations that zero in on your strategic goals - and your educational bottom line.

Social Networking

Social networking(SN)is the grouping of individuals into specific groups,like small rural communities or a neighbourhood subdivision.Although social networking is possible in person,especially in schools or in the workplace,it is most popular online. This is because like most high schools,colleges,and workplaces,the internet is filled with million of individuals who are looking to meet other internet users to develop friendships and business relationships. Building a dynamic,performance based personal network,by exercising good people skills,contact management and building social capital, is an essential key to successful innovation. ALLFON knows that innovation is a social activity,but idea peoplewriters,composers,inventors,researchers-love their private time,those moments when they had a pad of paper, a piano or a lab full of toys that they can use to satisfy their curiosity. Unfortunately,ideas,manuscripts and inventions don't make an impact-don't become innovationsuntil they go beyond the idea person. ALLFON's social networking solution transforms organizations from stove-piped communication models to interactive villages of robust wealth. Innovation takes people skills. In particular,an aspiring innovator needs to engage people that can do things he or she can't. Enter ALLFON with our social networking solution for education.

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management/types-of-change

Restructuring and Policy Change in the UK Higher Education Sector

Restructuring and Policy Change in the UK Higher Education Sector

Last modified by henningmeyer on 2011/01/30 00:12 Comments (0) | Attachments (1) | History | Information The higher education industry, as part of the public sector, is highly dependent on the policy framework set by government. Government decisions determine the structure and purpose of universities and have a huge impact on the way individual higher education institutions operate. Recent decades have seen major changes to the UK Higher Education framework. Above all the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 (Office of Public Sector Information, 1992) which amongst other novelties set the framework for former polytechnics to become universities, transformed the structure of the sector. Additionally to structural reforms there have also been politically enabled qualitative management changes. (Whitty, 1989) Frequently referred to as new public services management, these changes have sought to introduce business-type management styles into higher education. This new managerialism has involved the widespread use of business techniques, such as quantitative performance indicators, the introduction of consumerist approaches and market discipline into higher education management. (Randle and Brady, 1997) The increasing influence of market thinking has also been detectable in the way university research funding has been allocated, as the grant distribution has been focused more and more on economic impact. And economic concerns, such as employability, have also gained growing influence on the conduct and content of higher education teaching. Not only have generic competencies, social skills and personality development taken a much more prominent role in university education, the teaching content of academic disciplines themselves has also increasingly been checked for economic relevance. (Teichler, 1999) As such changes represent a major shift away from the traditional Humboldtian idea of universities (Van Vught, 1996), it is not surprising that the rising role of managers and manageracademics has created organisational problems including outright political clashes, in which new managerialism is sometimes even seen as an ideology undermining academic practices. (Deem and Brehony, 2005)

Post-recession Austerity: The latest Changes of the Higher Education Framework Following the steady changes to higher education policy described above, the economic recession and the subsequent pressures on public spending have prompted another round of quantitative as well as qualitative changes in the higher education sector. After some initial measures that already produced major problems for universities, such as the below inflation increase in the teaching budgets at a time when more students wanted to take up university studies (Paton, 2010), the sector has subsequently been hit by unprecedented cuts announced in

the Comprehensive Spending Review 2010 (CSR) by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne. The recent measures are on a qualitatively new level but built on a policy direction that had already been taken by the previous government. At a conference last year, former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson announced that universities should remove resources from areas where they are weaker, to concentrate them where they are achieving teaching and research excellence. The reality is that we cannot afford a system in which every institution tries to do everything. (Turner, 2010) And in order to maintain the old target of having 50% of young people go through higher education, Mandelson also called for the prioritisation of shorter degrees: "Alongside traditional three-year full-time degrees, I want to see part-time study, two-year foundation degrees and three-year honours courses delivered intensively over two years. When their objectives and outcomes are clearly defined, and when they are taught well and properly resourced, there is no sense at all in which these alternatives should be seen as inferior to threeyear equivalents." (Turner, 2010) In May 2010 the new Liberal Democrat Conservative coalition government took office and unprecedented spending cuts across the public sector were quickly announced. In the CSR, the Chancellor set out how university funding in general terms would be treated for the remainder of the Parliament (until 2015). Many of the announcements were based on the findings of a report written by former BP Chairman Lord Browne, who had been commissioned to investigate potential changes in the higher education sector by the last government. The role of Lord Browne already shows the directional link between the current and the previous government. The pace of change, however, has been rapidly increased. First of all, the new government made a significant financial distinction between the two main functions of a university: research and teaching. The research budget was frozen in cash terms, which in effect meant a real cut of 10 percent over the next four years if inflation is taken into account. The university teaching budget, on the other hand, was cut by an unprecedented 40%. Additional pressure on many universities will result from the fact that within the remaining budgets there will also be financial shifts away from arts, humanities and social sciences to technology and natural sciences. In fact, in terms of the teaching budget, the government signalled that only the so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) would receive public teaching funds in the future. In the arts, humanities and social sciences, 100% of public funding might be cut leaving universities specialising or heavily reliant on those subjects in a precarious situation. The announced cuts have caused considerable concern and anger in the industry as exemplified by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) chairman. The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) reports: "Sir Alan Langlands, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said the shift heralded by the Comprehensive Spending Review was in its politest form a new paradigm for higher education funding... a rapid move to an as-yet untested model starved of Hefce teaching grants". () (Atwood, 2008)

The scale of the announcement in teaching funding is also revealed by HEFCE modeling, which showed that even assuming average tuition fees of 7000 (more than double the amount charged in 2010 2011) there is likely to be a funding shortfall in excess of 1bn over the coming years:

Source: (Atwood, 2008) So, it is very unlikely that even a massive increase of tuition fees will be enough to fully compensate universities for the significant loss of public funding, let alone allow for more investment into the industry, as is the case in many competitor countries. Even though the final details of the funding allocation remain murky to some extent, it is clear that both the research and teaching budgets have been hit by major cuts 10% and 40% respectively and that in both budgets there will by a prioritisation of STEM subjects at the expense of arts, humanities and social sciences. The Browne Review At the end of 2009, the then Labour government of Gordon Brown commissioned the former BP chairman Lord Browne to conduct a review and produce a report on the future funding of higher education in England. The fundamental assumption at the beginning was the need for more investment in higher education in England (in the other British nations other systems are in operation) to sustain its world leading position. The status quo had become seen as unsustainable due to more investment in higher education elsewhere. In the language of strategy, the

government perceived the danger of strategic wear-out due to a change in competitors behaviour. This perception was the trigger for policy change. Lord Browne himself summarised this backdrop as follows: "England has an internationally respected system of higher education. There are now a record number of people enrolled, studying an increasingly varied range of subjects at a diverse set of higher education institutions (HEIs). Graduates go on to higher paid jobs and add to the nations strength in the global knowledge based economy. For a nation of our scale, we possess a disproportionate number of the best performing HEIs in the world, including three of the top ten. However, our competitive edge is being challenged by advances made elsewhere. Other countries are increasing investment in their HEIs and educating more people to higher standards. In November 2009, I was asked to lead an independent panel to review the funding of higher education and make recommendations to ensure that teaching at our HEIs is sustainably financed, that the quality of that teaching is world class and that our HEIs remain accessible to anyone who has the talent to succeed." (Lord Browne of Madingley, 2010) In the first chapter of the report, it became clear that the review of higher education policy was to become a textbook case of lesson learning. The fact gathering was conducted across time as well as space. In terms of lessons from Englands own past, the conclusion was that even though there is increasing pressure for change, the nations higher education history has left it in a good place to achieve the necessary policy changes as it has a whole variety of strengths to build on, including a disproportionate number of world-class universities. So, the look back at Englands university history was not the trigger for policy change but a confirmation of solid foundations. The trigger for policy change was investment in competitor countries: "Average investment per student across OECD countries is increasing: by 14 percentage points from 2000 to 2007. Public spending constraints in the wake of the economic crisis have also sparked public debate about private contributions to higher education. Finland, Sweden and Denmark have adopted the international trend and recently introduced tuition fees for some programmes. Many countries have seized the opportunity to accelerate other reform policies to improve the capability of their higher education systems to compete internationally. In this context, we cannot be complacent in expecting to capitalise on the strength of our higher education system. We are slipping down the global league tables in terms of the quantity of higher level skills in the labour force and falling even faster on the measure of young people with higher level skills. The international competition will not let up other countries will keep on capitalising on the benefits of higher education for their economies and citizens and raise the bar on participation and investment. Whatever changes are made now in England require a long term perspective. Our system needs a sustainable funding solution for the future, even as it faces significant reductions in public investment over the next few years." (Lord Browne of Madingley, 2010) The assessment of higher education funding against the backdrop of the biggest economic crisis in decades thus made the case for more in times of less and also drew attention to qualitative as well as quantitative consequences that were on the horizon if higher education policy was not changed successfully:

"Without continued investment in higher education social mobility as well as potential economic growth in England was at risk. Additionally to qualitative and quantitative aspects of higher education, it was also acknowledged that its benefits are split between the individual enjoying higher education and society at large. The individual him- or herself has a higher likelihood of finding a well-paid job and is therefore better off than without a degree. Society at large benefits as degree holders and their economic activity are key drivers of economic growth and hence positively impact on many more people across society." (Lord Browne of Madingley, 2010) The governments acceptance of the two main aims of providing better teaching at lower costs to the taxpayer was also identified by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), which concluded that the differences between the government policy and Lord Brownes report were only in the detail. In particular the institute noted that: "the broad philosophical and ideological thrust has been accepted - that the state should not unless exceptionally - fund universities directly for providing teaching, but that the market, as manifested through student choice, should be the determining driver." (Higher Education Policy Institute, 2010) The basic rationale of the government has hence been that other than in the cases of strategically supported and expensive to teach STEM subjects there will be a free market for higher education with a maximum fee cap of 9000 per year (The Browne report suggested no cap at all) and regular fees of up to 6000. The HEPI researchers also acknowledged that the maximum fee of 9000 per year will effectively become the going rate. A lot has also been made about the way fees will be repaid. There will be no upfront payments (although this can be done in some cases) and students only start paying back (with marketdriven interest rates added) when they are earning 21k per year or more. Remaining debt will be forgiven after 30 years. The long-term implications of this way of financing are in no way clear and there remain big doubts as to whether the governments calculations actually add up over the decades. (Higher Education Policy Institute, 2010) There is, however, no doubt at all that the governments new policy represents an almost trebling of tuition fees and graduates will leave university no matter how the debt is financed with a much higher debt load than hitherto. It also remains unclear in what way the shift away from public funding of higher education teaching towards a privatised system in which the student bears all the costs in most subjects will increase teaching quality. It was mentioned above that even a considerable increase of tuition fees will not be sufficient to compensate for the loss of public teaching funding. Many universities will hence find themselves in a situation, in which they suffer net income losses even though fees are significantly increased. The pressure for restructuring and cost savings is thus immense. During the political process of turning reform proposals into law which was accompanied my mass protests and sometimes also violent clashes the focus of the political debate was clearly on the changes to the funding regime. The qualitative aim of improving the quality of teaching at the same time was almost completely faded out. Indicative of this is the speech by university minster David Willets delivered in early November 2010:

"Overall this is a good deal for universities and for students. The bulk of universities money will not come through the block grant but instead follow the choices of students. It will be up to each university or college to decide what it charges, including the amounts for different courses. All universities and colleges, whatever contribution they decide to charge, will be expected to publish a standard set of information about their performance on the indicators that students and their parents value: contact hours, teaching patterns and employment outcomes. We also propose to open up higher education provision to new providers, including Further Education Colleges. These proposals offer a thriving future for universities, with extra freedoms and less bureaucracy, and they ensure value for money and real choice for learners. We need to act quickly so that prospective students know where they stand. We intend to implement these changes for the 2012/13 academic year. () Lord Brownes report has rightly generated much debate. When the review was established, exactly a year ago, it was on a cross-party basis. I hope the Opposition will feel able to maintain that spirit. From our side, the two parties in the coalition have accepted the reports broad thrust and are today putting forward a single, coherent and progressive policy. It will deliver a better deal for our students, for our graduates and our universities." (Willets, 2010) Unless the British government holds the belief that the introduction of market mechanisms with much fewer public resources will automatically increase the quality of teaching it is hard to see how the second main aim of government policy is meant to be realised. In any case the political debate leading up to the new funding regime was determined by the quantitative aspects and not by quality of teaching considerations. It will be very interesting to follow hoe English universities will restructure and realign their strategic plans in the next two years. References ATWOOD, R. 2008. Hefce Chief: Prepare for tough journey in uncharted territory. The Times Higher Education Supplement. DEEM, R. & BREHONY, K. 2005. Management as Ideology: The Case of 'new managerialism' in Higher Education. Oxford Review of Education, 31, 217-235. HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY INSTITUTE. 2010. HEPI publishes response to the government's proposals for higher education funding [Online]. London. [Accessed 14th October 2010]. LORD BROWNE OF MADINGLEY 2010. Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Eductaion Funding and Student Finance. London: UK Government - Independent Review. OFFICE OF PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION. 1992. Further and Higher Education Act 1992 [Online]. London. Available: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1992/Ukpga_19920013_en_1 [Accessed 5th May 2010].

PATON, G. 2010. Warning over university budget cuts [Online]. London: The Daily Telegraph. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7465922/Warning-overuniversity-budget-cuts.html [Accessed 5th May 2010]. RANDLE, K. & BRADY, N. 1997. Further education and the new managerialism. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 21, 229-239. TEICHLER, U. 1999. Higher education policy and the world of work: changing conditions and challenges. Higher Education Policy, 12, 285-312. TURNER, D. 2010. Mandelson advocates two-year degrees [Online]. London. Available: http://cachef.ft.com/cms/s/0/0af18aa6-171c-11df-afcf-00144feab49a.html [Accessed 5th December 2010]. VAN VUGHT, F. 1996. The Humboldtian university under pressure: New forms of quality review in Western European higher education. van Vught, F. and Maasen, P.(Eds), Inside Academia, 185-223. WHITTY, G. 1989. The New Right and the National Curriculum: state control or market forces? Journal of Education Policy, 4, 329-341. WILLETS, D. 2010. Statement on Higher Education Funding and Student Finance [Online]. London: Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Available: http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-statement-on-HE-funding-and-studentfinance [Accessed 15th December 2010].
Indian education Sector will be open to FDI

There is an acute shortage of good faculty in Technical and Management education in India, but as we progress we are having huge shortage of quality manpower in India. As India is an emerging market and growing at 8.5% plus GDP per last three years India is facing a tremendous shortage of skilled/talented manpower. Quality educational system is becoming a necessary for India. Indian government has privatized and opened the educational sector to churn out both quality and quality, in recent times they are opening up the educational sector to FDI. Ruth David of Forbes predicts that "The Indian government will allow foreign universities to enter India, setting in motion a revolution in education and helping the country meet the growing demand for an educated workforce." Indian GDP has crossed US$1 Trillion and will be doubling by another 5 years time if the growth rate is unabated.

Types of Change
Understanding the nature of the change you wish to effect and the context in which you are working are important in determining an appropriate strategy. Entering uncharted change territory without some sort of route map puts you at an immediate disadvantage from the start.

One of the first stages in charting the territory is to understand a little more about the type of change you wish to make (broadly where you want to get to and how you plan to travel). There are a number of ways in which change can be categorised, most are related to the extent of the change and whether it is seen as organic (often characterised as bottom-up) or driven (topdown). Ackerman (1997) has distinguished between three types of change: Type of Change Characteristics May be either planned or emergent; it is first order, or incremental. It is change that enhances or corrects existing aspects of an organisation, often focusing on the improvement of a skill or process.

Developmental

Transitional

Seeks to achieve a known desired state that is different from the existing one. It is episodic, planned and second order, or radical. Much of the organisational change literature is based on this type. Is radical or second order in nature. It requires a shift in assumptions made by the organisation and its members.

Transformational Transformation can result in an organisation that differs significantly in terms of structure, processes, culture and strategy. It may, therefore, result in the creation of an organisation that operates in developmental mode - one that continuously learns, adapts and improves. Planned versus emergent change Sometimes change is deliberate, a product of conscious reasoning and actions - planned change. In contrast, change sometimes unfolds in an apparently spontaneous and unplanned way. This type of change is known as emergent change. Change can be emergent rather than planned in two ways:

Managers make a number of decisions apparently unrelated to the change that emerges. The change is therefore not planned. However, these decisions may be based on unspoken, and sometimes unconscious, assumptions about the organisation, its environment and the future (Mintzberg, 1989) and are, therefore, not as unrelated as they first seem. Such implicit assumptions dictate the direction of the seemingly disparate and unrelated decisions, thereby shaping the change process by 'drift' rather than by design. External factors (such as the economy, competitors' behaviour, and political climate) or internal features (such as the relative power of different interest groups, distribution of knowledge, and uncertainty) influence the change in directions outside the control of managers. Even the most carefully planned and executed change programme will have some emergent impacts.

This highlights two important aspects of managing change.

The need to identify, explore and if necessary challenge the assumptions that underlie managerial decisions. Understanding that organisational change is a process that can be facilitated by perceptive and insightful planning and analysis and well crafted, sensitive implementation phases, while acknowledging that it can never be fully isolated from the effects of serendipity, uncertainty and chance (Dawson, 1996).

An important (arguably the central) message of recent management of change literature is that organisation-level change is not fixed or linear in nature but contains an important emergent element as identified in the section on complexity theory. Episodic versus continuous change Another distinction is between episodic and continuous change. Episodic change, according to Weick and Quinn (1999), is 'infrequent, discontinuous and intentional'. Sometimes termed 'radical' or 'second order' change, episodic change often involves replacement of one strategy or programme with another. Continuous change, in contrast, is 'ongoing, evolving and cumulative'. Also referred to as 'first order' or 'incremental' change, continuous change is characterised by people constantly adapting and editing ideas they acquire from different sources. At a collective level these continuous adjustments made simultaneously across units can create substantial change. The distinction between episodic and continuous change helps clarify thinking about an organisation's future development and evolution in relation to its long-term goals. Few organisations are in a position to decide unilaterally that they will adopt an exclusively continuous change approach. They can, however, capitalise upon many of the principles of continuous change by engendering the flexibility to accommodate and experiment with everyday contingencies, breakdowns, exceptions, opportunities and unintended consequences that punctuate organisational life (Orlikowski, 1996). Using these characteristics proposed changes can be placed along two scales: radical incremental and core - peripheral (Pennington 2003) Plotting the character of a proposed change along these scales can provide a sense of how difficult the introduction of any particular initiative might be and how much disturbance to the status quo it might generate. Radical changes to an institution's or department's core business will normally generate high levels of disturbance; incremental changes to peripheral activities are often considered to be unexceptional and can be accommodated as a matter of course, especially if the group involved has a successful past record of continuous improvement.

Organisational change - what does this mean? I had a conversation with a chap a few days ago about organisational change - what he actually wanted was a change to the organisational design of his organisation (same people, different labels and responsibilities) along with a few remuneration and job role changes. What he didn't want was organisational change, where there is a rethink of the way people work, inprovements to processes and systems, team and organisational culture and suchlike. This type of activity will drive out real financial value, whereas simply changing the organisational design is likely to incur costs, cause unnecessary turmoil and focus away from getting the job done. Businesses are adept at changing the organisational design of their operations - how many places have we all worked where we see things changing every week, month, quarter in this respect - but these tweaks are rarely (never?) assessed in terms of the impacts that they will have, operationally and financially. If we accept that people don't like change, and they come to work to do a good job, we need managers to think about the impacts of their actions and not have a casual attitude to things that they can do with a swift memo. What organisations really need is strategic thinking- for instance, will this change actually deliver real financial value, what needs to happen to make the change accepted and effective, and are there other things that need to be done to ensure continued high-quality customer service etc.