This is the most up to date, complete and concise publication on the colors of change. It is written for both practitioners and academics that want to go beyond the basics. Those who already know about this change theory are likely to be surprised to find there is more to both the model and its applications Read more…
The complexity of tough issues can only be handled effectively with intensive local participation. Such participation is not straightforward as people may shy away from the unfamiliar repertoires, unpredictable processes and inevitable opposition that come with the territory. This paper focuses on how to facilitate local ownership in a series of paradoxical interventions with sufficient depth and credibility. Read more…
International trade can make a huge difference towards sustainability, as over half of what is produced globally crosses national borders. Several of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals – such as realizing ‘zero hunger’ and ‘no poverty’, ensuring all have ‘decent work’, and taking ‘climate action’ – crucially depend on transforming the way international trade is organized. But international value chains are complicated, involving many different people working in diverse contexts that change over time. Therefore Read more…
This paper explores how action research takes place within and between four contexts: adding practical value, improving institutions, developing professions, and contributing to theory. We argue that action research is more than those activities conducted within these contexts: it is a process of handling the generative tensions in the boundary regions. Read more…
A persistent stereotype of consultants is that of experts who have all the answers. However, the more complex problems are, the less consultants are able to provide ‘magical solutions’. Causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are a powerful tool to deal with issues characterized by content complexity and process complexity. Read more…
Complex issues require continuous change that is planned incrementally. This paper focuses on how such emergent change can be shaped through a process of small wins and explains how this may even use adversity to fuel the change. The research shows how planning is anything but an innocuous support activity for change efforts and describes how it can either frustrate or enable deep change. Read more…
Since a few years visual artists and designers in the Netherlands have banded together with organizations to adress social issues in a different way. They focus on complex issues where sensemaking and participation is key. During the last half year or so three more action research projects were taken on with lost of enthusiasm. The movement reported on this October at the Dutch Design Week. Read more…
Current reforms in for instance health care or community development in troubled neighborhoods, are brave attempts at social innovations toward a more sustainable society. Such innovations ask for the questioning, discarding and renewal of ingrained practices and their re-assemblage into novel forms of collective, coordinated action. Societal, macro – level transitions play out in organizational change efforts that are especially challenging because they need to address “wicked problems” that are complex and ambiguous in terms of both content and process and therefore defy the application of simple, short – term solutions. Instead, they require a multidimensional approach and the involvement of many actors with different interests, viewpoints and affiliations. Read more…
This case study presents reflections on a research intervention conducted at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The subject was the practice of administration. Its objective became to understand its “wicked problems” and to create action principles. It was an analytical research effort as well as a learning intervention. Read more…
Because of its apparent simplicity and luring strength-based stance, appreciative inquiry can be misunderstood as an attractive and easy to emulate technique. Such misunderstanding may cause slippage from thoughtful inquiry into a managerial tool to create motivational experiences at work rather than to engage with complex issues. Such slippage may ultimately turn the appreciative approach into another disappointing management fad. Fortunately, the prolific use of appreciative inquiry during the last decades provides us with rich experiential material for timely reflection, critique and renewal.
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OD has an established tradition. There is a community of practice, academic research, handbooks in all sorts, development of new practices, lots of publications, proven methods. All seems fine. At the same time there is recurrent talk and publications expressing worry about the future of OD. Read more…
Causal loop diagrams can help in tackling complex issues effectively. Until the nineteen-seventies the literature focussed on the technique of such diagrams. Since then it has become evident that participation of stakeholders in making and applying such diagrams is desired to affect change. Read more…
Professionalism still is on the way up. However, the working methods of managers and professionals do not develop at the same pace. Professionals often seek out their workplace within an organisation but then proceed to act as soloists, which makes fragmentation, mediocrity and non-commitment the rule rather than the exception. The manager’s reflex dictates that he/she tackles problems with control and command, resulting in all sorts of conflicts. Read more…
There is no shortage of tough issues: whether it is collaboration between professionals, external oriented government, sustainable economy or development cooperation. They are characterized by complexity of different kinds: many factors and many actors are involved. It makes tough issues hard to pin down and impossible to eradicate. The dominant change repertoires are ill equipped for tough issues: clear division of tasks and responsibilities, minimizing conflicts, drawing up organizational missions, rolling out large-scale change programs Read more…
