What is Change?

We use the concept of “change” all the time but there seems to be surprisingly little written about it as an all-embracing concept. The literature on change is, of course, immense but is divided very much into several completely separate fields which guard their boundaries very strongly - dealing with the individual, the organisational and the societal respectively (forgive the last term but “social” does have a rather different meaning from activities relating to a particular society). The first field tends to be interested in things like stress; the second in the management of change (but in 3 separate sectors); and the last in collective challenges to power which often go under the label of “social change”

Capacity development is one of the few approaches which recognises the importance of all three – although, in reality, its focus is on training and it never ventures into the dangerous field of social change.   It’s only in the past year or so that people have dared challenge this (see last 2 titles in "networked" level of table)  

As my few faithful readers know, I have taken on this strange, Sisyphean task of trying to make sense of the modern world. Each time I think I am close to success, the stone breaks free and rolls back down the mountain – or rather I realise either that the words don’t do justice to the reality or, more often, that what I regarded as original thought is now the conventional wisdom. I leave the text for a few months and then – masochist that I am – return to the task. The latest version of “What is to be Done?” has some marginal changes but I’m now keen to improve the chapter which deals with Change.                   

Our understanding of that phenomenon generally comes from history books the most popular of which deal with individuals - who are easier to identify with. Talk of technological and economic forces tends to be too abstract for most people – although recent books from the likes of Jared Diamond and Yuval Hari are enjoying a new vogue by virtue presumably of our increased awareness of the power of technology. 

The trouble is that knowledge has, in the past half century, become so specialised that it is now very difficult to explore Change in a truly inter-disciplinary way. That’s why I’ve devoted the second chapter to the glories of trespassing across boundaries – whether of class, nation, profession or intellectual discipline.

This table tries to reduce a very complex field of writing to a few milestones. 

The Level	The Focus	Example
The individual	Self-help, psychology	In Over our Heads – the mental demands of modern life Robert Kegan  1995
The organisational	Commercial – managing change, OD	In Search of Excellence Peters and Waterman 1982
	Public – new public management, public value	Reinventing Government Graeber and Osborne (1992) Appraising public value; past, present and futures (2011) useful (academic) summary article Public Value Management – governance and reform in Britain ; John Connolly et al (2021)
	Non-governmental	Creating Public Value in Practice – advancing the common good in a ….noone in charge world J Bryson and Crosby (2015)
The societal	Social change	Can Democracy be Saved?  - participation, deliberation and social movements; Donatella Della Porta (2013)   Power in movement – social movement and contentious politics; Sydney Tarrow (2011 edition) Change the World Robert Quinn (2000)
networked	The dynamic between the 3 levels	Life and How to Survive it R Skynner and J Cleese 1990 The World We Create Tomas Bjorkman  2019 Unlearn – a compass for radical transformation Hans Burmeister (2021)