Understanding Organizational Change: The Contemporary Experience of People at Work - Hardcover

- offers an overview of change management

- brings new case studies to help students understand organizational change

- provides a concise overview of the developments in change management with new critical case study material for the use of advanced undergraduate and masters level management students;

- presents the contemporary experience of change for people in work and employment,

- considers alternative strategies and practical lessons on living with change.

Offering a critical analysis of change, Patrick Dawson resists the hype of popular management books which formulate simple change recipes, but uses the views and experience of people holding positions from shop floor operator to chief executive officer to further our understanding of complex change processes. In using the insights and views of those who promote, implement and experience the effects of change, this book moves beyond simple determinist arguments based on economic imperatives to a greater appreciation of the sociological dimensions of change.

The integration of theories of change with processes of organisational adaptation is central to the objective of understanding organizational change both for its academic value and its practical worth. Understanding Organizational Change will be essential reading final year undergraduates and postgraduates (MBA/MSc) taking organizational change and change management modules across business and management studies.

Patrick Dawson is Professor of Change, Creativity and Innovation at the University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen. He holds a PhD in industrial sociology from the University of Southampton and during his early career, worked at the University of Surrey and the University of Edinburgh. He moved to Australia in the 1980s and took up a position at the University of Adelaide.  In studying change in UK, Australia and New Zealand based organizations, Patrick has worked on a number of Australian Research Council (ARC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projects in collaboration with scholars at other universities. He has examined change in a number of organizations including: Pirelli Cables, British Rail, General Motors, Hewlett Packard and the CSIRO. Since taking up the Salvesen Chair at Aberdeen he has held visiting professorships at Roskilde University, Lund University and the Danish Technical University in Denmark, an adjunct professorship at Monash University and a research professorship at the University of Wollongong in Australia.