Exploring CHANGE

I continue to add mainly books (but a few articles) to what has become a 75 page collection of notes about more than 100 texts. You’ll find the latest version on the first line of the top-right hand column headed “Ebooks you can access”. The literature on change is, of course, immense but is divided very much into five completely separate fields which, curiously, seem totally uninterested in each other - dealing with

• the individual which draws on psychology and tends to be interested in 

things like stress;  

• one which focuses on the technological aspects – and how they are  

commercially exploited

• the organisational which focuses on the management of change aș 

organisations react to the technological changes (with companies, the public sector and the NGO field receiving different treatment);

• the societal which is interested in collective challenges to power 

which often go under the label of “social change” but has also attracted the interest of scientists exploring the world of complexity

• only a very few recent writers have been brave enough to attempt a synthesis

I’ve added one of very few good articles about change - this 1998 piece by

Kieron Healy on “Social Change – mechanisms and metaphors” who writes
 

Despite its importance to the social sciences — or perhaps because of it — there 

has been a lot of disagreement about the best way to deal with change. This 

disagreement extends to arguments about whether there is even a sensible question 

to address in the first place. If change is the stuff of social life, some argue, then 

social science just is the study of change. Talk of “Social Change” per se is empty 

precisely because it encompasses everything. Critics reply, to the contrary, that 

the social sciences have almost entirely ignored the issue and concerned themselves 

with a more tractable world of stability and equilibrium. The problem of change 

can hardly be avoided, but theory and explanation are unthinkingly applied, largely 

metaphorical, and usually no better than folk wisdom can manage.

Social change was, at the end of the 19^th century, a rather abstract subject fit only for such social theorists as Comte, Marx and Weber. The 1960s, however, saw a more rebellious spirit stir – although the books on the subject¹ were still essentially theoretical and aimed at an academic audience – with the exception of historians Barrington Moore², Sydney Tarrow³ and Charles Tilly⁴. But all of that changed in the 1990s – triggered perhaps by the Velvet Revolutions demonstrating the power of ordinary citizens. Other academics began to wake up and notice that the masses had political agency⁵

Saul Alinsky, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich were my inspirations to the power of community activism in the late 1960s from which I took a “pincer approach” to force change in Strathclyde Regional council by a combination of political drive from the top and community pressures from below. The organisational culture was, of course, one of classic bureaucracy⁶ – but, from its very start, some of us made sure that it had to contend with the unruly forces of political idealism and community power.

Thirty years later. I was doing a lot of training sessions in the Presidential Academies of Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and developed there what I called the “opportunistic” or “windows of opportunity” theory of change against what I started to call “impervious regimes” ie so confident of the lack of challenge to their rule that they had become impervious to their citizens.

“Most of the time our systems seem impervious to change – but always (and suddenly) an opportunity arises. Those who care about the future of their society, prepare for these “windows of opportunity”. And the preparation is about analysis, mobilisation and trust.

• It is about us caring enough about our organisation and society to speak out about the need for change.

• It is about taking the trouble to think and read about ways to improve things

• to help create and run networks of such change.

• And it is about establishing a personal reputation for probity and good judgement

• that people will follow your lead when that window of opportunity arises”.

There may be too much of a Leninist touch to this formula! In these days of “systems and chaos theory” we probably require a bit more humility – and flexibility.

But I do remember reading Managing Change and making it stick by Roger 

Plant when it first came out in paperback in 1989/90.  This was the very first 

book I came across on the topic - and note the date! It was only in the 1990s 

that the “management of change” exploded into fashionability7 

1Such as Theories of Social Change Applebaum, Richard (1970), Social change: Sources, patterns and consequences Etzioni, Amitai and Etzioni-Halevy nEva (1973) and Introduction to Theories of Social Change Strassen H and Randall S (1974)

 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Barrington Moore (1966)

  Power in Movement – social movement and contentious politics Sydney Tarrow (1994 – 2011 ed)

  From Mobilisation to Revolution  Charles Tilly (1977)

  Another World is Possible – world social forum proposals for an alternative globalization ed WF Fisher and T Ponniah (2003)

6So brilliantly described in Bureaucracy – what government agencies do and why they do it James Q Wilson (Basic Books 1989) although a somewhat different view is taken in “The Value of Bureaucracy” by Paul du Gay (Oxford Univerity Press 2004)

7 with The Expertise of the Change Agent - public performance and backstage activity (David Buchanan (Prentice-Hall 1992) for example offering some fascinating insights us the deeply impressive