CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHANGE

Abstract

Intensifying efforts to utilize behavioral science concepts and knowledge in administrative research and practice in education during the past quarter‐century have produced an impressive body of literature, largely taxonomic in nature. Much of this literature involves system theory and attempts to identify and classify the various processes by which planned change may be controlled and directed. It thus gives rise to the concept of coherent change strategies and tactics: a concept useful to both the student of organizational change and the administrative practitioner. The author describes four major attempts to identify and classify strategies of organizational change and the tactice that “go with them. In general, these strategies address the problem of how to change organizations, but it is also necessary to know what to change. Leavitt has identified and described four crucial organizational variables which are amenable to administrative control and manipulation: (1) task, (2) structure, (3) people, and (4) technology. These variables are dynamically interrelated but are helpful to the researcher and the administrator in designing and monitoring systemic approaches to organizational change utilizing any strategy which may have been selected.

Citation

OWENS, R.G. (1974), "CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHANGE", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009708