Experiencing organizational change: Types of change across levels and its critical context

Although organizational change has been studied extensively, research on the experience of this process has not received its due attention. The focus of this paper is to highlight the importance of understanding the experience of organizational change. Based on an organizational change intervention and having conversations and feedback from organizational members, we realize the complexity of the experience of organizational change and its multifaceted nature based on the experiences at different organizational levels. This paper establishes the need to expand beyond existing models and explores organizational change from the perspective of Chaos Theory, general processes of change, the four Ideal-Types as presented by Van de Ven and Poole (1995) especially that of the Quad-Motor Change process. As organizations are really human systems, it is proposed that juxtaposing general change processes, the four Ideal-Types and Chaos Theory would help us understand organizational change as a holistic process involving human systems during organizing. The findings from this paper show that the experience of organizational change is a complex one (experienced differently across organizational levels) and central to the success of the change process is the need to create a psychologically safe context for managers and leaders of organizations to have conversations with their members. This paper highlights the significance of conversations as part of understanding organizations and the organizing process. From this perspective, managers and leaders in the 21st century can learn to create successful organizational change.