360? feedback process
Feedback is provided by subordinates, peers, and supervisors/bosses. It also includes a self-assessment and, in some cases, feedback from external sources such as customers and suppliers or other interested stakeholders.

4I model
Mary Crossan's model according to which organizational learning involves four learning processes: intuiting, coming up with initial ideas; interpreting, understanding their implications; integrating, developing cohesive action at the group level; and institutionalizing, incorporating learning across the organization.

Action Learning
Small group work aimed at exploring problems, where the learning comes from the exploration of the issues with others. The action may be a shift in someone's thinking or the decision to do something differently.

Action Research
Derived from Lewin's planned approach to change, it puts action at the heart of research. It recognizes that successful action comes from analysing the situation accurately and choosing the most appropriate solution. The cycle of data collection, diagnosis, feedback, intervention, and evaluation may be repeated: the action research cycle.

Acquisition
The takeover of one organization by another.

Aftermath
The final stage in Isabella's model of how managers understand events as their organizations change, in which they take time to evaluate changes that have taken place in terms of their consequences, their strengths and weaknesses, the winners and losers, and so on.

Anticipation
The first stage in Isabella's model of how managers understand events as their organizations change, in which they gather scattered information as they realize something is going on, without a clear understanding of events.

Anticipatory change
Change made in expectation of the need to do so.

Apparent culture change
A change in which the culture accommodates change and does not genuinely alter, despite appearances.

Appraisal theory perspective on emotions
The view that prior cognitive interpretations of situations trigger emotions.

Appreciative Inquiry
An inquiry process based on exploring existing strengths and developing greater capacity in those strengths.

Artefacts
Observable features?the objects, structures, and patterns of behaviour that typify an organization.

Assumptions
Beliefs and values?about work, organizations, relationships, people, etc.?that have become so ingrained they are often unrecognized.

[Back to top]

Back stage
Activity that is covert and behind the scenes.

Balanced scorecard
An approach to defining organizational effectiveness in which a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures are used to assess performance.

Behavioural commitment
Retrospectively discovering beliefs that explain or justify actions.

BRIC
An acronym comprising the first letters of the four fastest-growing, major economies in the world: Brazil, India, China and Russia.

Business process re-engineering
The radical redesign of business processes to achieve performance improvements.

Bystanding
In conversation, when someone stands back from the issue and provides perspective on what is happening.

[Back to top]

Calculative psychological contract
A psychological contract based on the exchange of work for the satisfaction of needs, such as money, social and career opportunities, promotion, training, and a sense of achievement.

Change curve
A visual representation of a stage model of individual adaptation to organizational change in the form of a graph, which dips during the initial stages of transition before rising in later stages (see Figure 4.1 on page 74).

Chaos theory
Unpredictable outcomes are produced over the long term, with patterns within that unpredictability.

Charismatic transformations
In which corporate transformation is required and management adopts a charismatic style to gain emotional commitment to the future vision of the organization.

Coalition
The coming together into groups of those who share particular interests, or who want to advance specific approaches to change.

Coercive psychological contract
A psychological contract established when individuals are working completely against their wishes.

Coercive style
Change is imposed in staff without attempts to persuade them: compliance is required.

Collaborative merger
A merger or acquisition involving integration of cultures.

Collaborative style
Involves widespread participation by employees in important decisions about the organization's future.

Complexity theory
The theory that physical and social reality is composed of a wide range of interacting orderly, complex, and disorderly phenomena.

Complex responsive processes perspective (of organizations)
Organizations are viewed as patterns of interaction between people, which produces further interaction.

Confirmation
The second stage in Isabella's model of how managers understand events as their organizations change, in which they begin to develop explanations of what is happening based on their past experience.

Consultative style
Offers limited involvement in decision-making. Employees are asked for their views, which management will consider.

Content (of a change)
The actual change that takes place.

Context (of a change)
The causes, constraints, and opportunities that influence a change.

Contextual environment
The general environment in which an organization operates.

Contingency approach
The choice of approach is dependent on the circumstances.

Continuous process improvement
A process aimed at simultaneously increasing quality and reducing costs through seeing the process as a whole system and involving staff in the process of review.

Cooperative psychological contract
A psychological contract based on employees identifying with the perceived goals of the organization, and having a voice in the selection of those goals and how they are achieved.

Core competencies
An interdependent system of collective skills within an organization, including employee skills and explicit knowledge, technical and communication processes, and managerial systems and values, which provides a unique competitive advantage?not in any one particular situation, but in a sustainable way over time.

Core processes
Processes that are at the heart of the organization's activities, crucial to the delivery of the product to the customer, for example.

Corporate transformation
Organization-wide change: changes in structures, processes, and ways of thinking.

Culmination
The third stage in Isabella's model of how managers understand events as their organizations change, in which understandings are amended as they compare past and present, and new explanations and mental models are constructed.

Cultural acquirer
(In a redesign merger) the organization with the culture that prevails in the merged group.

Cultural dynamics model
The model of how values, artefacts, symbols, and assumptions relate in a cycle, developed by Mary Jo Hatch.

Culture
The name given to the collection of accepted ways of doing things and values that are shared by and influence people's behaviour in an organization.

[Back to top]

Deep acting
A form of emotional labour in which an employee attempts genuinely to feel, or not feel, an emotion.

Defects (Lean)
Faults in the product or dips in the quality of the finished product or instances in which they do not meet the customer requirements.

Defects (Six Sigma)
Instances in which the product of a process does not meet the customer requirement.

Defects per million opportunities (DPMO) (Six Sigma)
The number of defects that occur in a million attempts to deliver a specific product or process.

Delayering
The removal of a layer of the organization's hierarchy.

Developmental transitions
Change made by constant adjustment to environmental conditions, with management adopting a consultative approach.

DFSS (Six Sigma)
Design for Six Sigma: the systematizing of product development.

Dialogue
Conversation that begins by really listening and understanding each other's points of view with a commitment to understanding one another's underlying assumptions and decision-making frameworks, so that double-loop learning can take place.

Differentiation viewpoint
A viewpoint on organizational culture that focuses on consistency within subcultures.

Directed approach
Change that is driven from the top of the organization, employing firm persuasion to engage those affected.

Directive style
Leaders take the decisions about the change and create a vision of the future that they want staff to buy into.

Discontinuous change
Major organizational change, conducted rapidly.

Discretionary effort
Employees taking on work that is not strictly part of their job role.

DMAIC (Six Sigma)
An approach to problem-solving: define the issue; measure the problem; analyse the data; improve the process; and control the outcome.

Double-loop learning
Learning that involves reassessing the value of intended outcomes or the assumptions and values behind current practices.

Downsizing
A reduction in headcount, typically by redundancies.

Dynamic capabilities
A system within an organization-based on a set of processes to integrate, reconfigure, gain, and release resources-to adapt the organization's core competencies and how they are applied in rapidly changing environments.

[Back to top]

Ecosystem
A way in which complex natural systems evolve.

Edge of chaos
Systems are poised between order and disorder.

Emergent change
Change based on the assumption that it is a continuous unpredictable process of aligning and realigning in response to environmental changes.

Emotional balancing
The development of a balance between middle managers who are emotionally committed to change and those who attend to emotional support for subordinates during change.

Emotional contagion
The direct spread of emotions from one person to others.

Emotional intelligence
The ability to perceive and understand one?s own and others? emotions, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and behaviour.

Emotional labour
The suppression or apparent expression of emotions that is required as part of a person's work.

Employee engagement
People expressing themselves in their work physically, cognitively and emotionally.

Enculturation
People tending to adopt the patterns of behaviours, values, symbolic meanings, and assumptions of the culture while they work in an organization.

Entrepreneurial intuiting
Intuiting that involves finding a new way in which to view the organizational environment.

Environment
The forces external to the organization, for example markets, customers, the economy, and government policy.

Evaluation feedback
Data collected to undertake long-term assessment of the impact of change.

Evaluation (of change)
Data that is collected to review the progress and impact of a change programme.

Escalation of commitment
The phenomenon whereby the more people go through for a course of action, the more convincing they make their reasons for pursuing it.

Espoused values
Values that are stated in speaches, internal documents, posters, advertisements, corporate websites, etc.

Expert intuiting
Intuiting that involves identifying patterns, for example in the internal or external business environment.

Explicit knowledge
Knowledge that can be formally expressed and easily articulated.

Explicit knowledge at a collective level
Stories, jargon, and metaphors that circulate in the informal organization and provide capabilities that support effective working and organizational achievement.

Extension merger
A merger or acquisition in which the two former organizations continue to operate independently, and have separate cultures.

External environment
The world outside the organization. The term assumes that there is a boundary, at least metaphorically, between an organization's external and internal environment.

[Back to top]

Facilitated approach
An approach involving the wider membership of the organization in the shaping of change.

Facilitated change
Change in which the wider membership of the organization is involved in shaping the change.

Fine-tuning
Gentle change at departmental or unit level, for example changing policies or procedures.

First-order change
Doing more of the same more efficiently or effectively.

Following
In conversation, when someone supports and develops an idea.

Force field analysis
A planning tool that examines the forces (positive and negative) that may influence a change process.

Formal organization
The officially defined aspects of an organization?hierarchy, structure, production processes, etc.

Fragmentation viewpoint
A viewpoint on organizational culture that recognizes that the same event might be interpreted in contradictory ways even within a single subculture, or even by a single person.

Framing
The art of moderating your message to connect with your audience's needs and interests.

Front stage
An activity that is overt and complies with formal, logical norms of how things should happen within an organization.

Future Search
A large group method to undertake strategic action planning.

[Back to top]

Generation Y
A term for the demographic cohort following Generation X, which is those born between the mid-1970s and 2000.

Geographic trend
Patterns of activity that are specific to an area of the world.

GRIN technologies
An acronym formed from the first letters of four technologies that some scientists believe are most likely to transform society in the twenty-first century: genetics; robotics; information technology; and nanotechnology.

Group process
Working with the dynamics within a group, noticing what gives rise to patterns of behaviour within the group.

[Back to top]

Implementation feedback
Data collected to assess whether a change intervention is having the intended impact.

Incremental adjustment
Adjustments made in response to the changing environment. Such modifications are distinct, but not radical, for example adapting structures or strategies at unit or departmental level.

Incremental change
Small-scale changes that are relatively minor or conducted step by step.

Incremental cultural change
The incorporation of new values and assumptions (and usually corresponding symbols and artefacts) into an existing organizational culture.

Industry trends
Patterns in activity that are specific to an industry or sector of the economy.

Informal organization
Those aspects of an organization that are not officially defined, are often less visible, and are characteristically human.

Inner context
The context of change inside the organization.

Institutionalized (change)
Change that has an accepted part of an organization's ways of doing things.

Institutionalizing (4I model)
The organization-level process of incorporating what has been learned in one setting into other groups or work units, or across the organization, by embedding it in systems, structures, routines, and practices.

Integrating (4I model)
The process of putting new understandings into action at the group and organizational level by doing things differently.

Integration viewpoint
A viewpoint on organizational culture that ignores subcultural differences and other inconsistencies, or treats them simply as irregularities to be eliminated.

Interpreting (4I model)
The process of understanding an idea in more detail, as an individual or through conversation.

Intervention
Everything that a change practitioner does to disturb or intervene in the organizational system.

Intuiting (4I model)
The initial, individual-level process of coming up with new ideas or insights.

Issue selling
A process by which individuals draw others' attention to what they believe matters in order to influence decision-making and change.

[Back to top]

Jams
Events with online threaded discussions on set issues, which can involve thousands of people, initiated and popularized by IBM.

Job crafting
The subtle ways in which individuals often modify what is written in their job descriptions, changing the task or performing the task differently.

[Back to top]

Lean
A process management philosophy that aims to review processes to identify waste.

Learning organization
An organization in which organizational learning is especially effective so that it 'is continually expanding its capacity to create its future' (Senge, 2006:14).

Life cycle
A biological metaphor that suggests that organizations, like organisms, are born, grow through different phases, and then die, or are reborn or renewed.

Logical incrementalism
The development of change in small stages, through continual low-scale change, with the opportunity to adapt as the situation moves on.

Long-run agility
The capacity to change technology or products in order to respond to requirements.

[Back to top]

Management fashions
Beliefs, widely held by managers at a particular times, that certain management techniques are able to solve organizational problems.

Media richness
The level of cues and information available to a receiver of communication.

Mental models
Habitual ways of thinking about, and responding to, familiar situations.

Merger
When two organizations join together to become one single new entity.

Metaphor
A description or a way of looking at a thing (or a situation) as if it were something else.

Model 1 theories of action
Implicit rules by which people often interact: to be in unilateral control over situations; to maximize winning and minimize losing; to avoid anxiety and embarrassment; and to be seen to be rational.

Modular transformation
A major realignment of one or more departments (not the whole organization).

Momentum (change)
Sustaining the energy and focus of the change process.

Move
In conversation, when someone proposes an idea or advocates a way forward.

Movement
The second step in Lewin?s model of change. The chosen approach to change is implemented and it is expected to see people doing things differently.

[Back to top]

Normative knowledge
Individuals' understanding of the norms of expected or appropriate behaviour.

[Back to top]

Offshoring
Moving the outsourced service to another part of the world.

Open Space Technology
A large group method undertaken in marketplace format to enable networking and the creation of new ideas to solve organizational issues.

Opposing
In conversation, when someone challenges what has been said.

Organizational citizenship behaviour
Employees going out of their way to help colleagues in the workplace.

Organizational culture
Organizational processes that enable people to understand events, situations, objects, and actions in a shared and distinctive way.

Organizational learning
Learning that is affected by the systems, structures, routines, and practices of the organization and which changes these systems, structures, routines, and practices.

Organization development
A planned approach to organizational change, which is managed from the top, through interventions in the organization's processes to improve the well-being and/or the effectiveness of the organization.

Outer context
The context of change outside the organization.

Overproduction
Making too much (of a product) or making it too early, or making it 'just in case'.

[Back to top]

Participatory change communication
Communication to gain employee input to shape a change programme.

PESTLE
A framework for analysing six categories of external trends. The acronym comprises the first letter of each the categories: political; economic; social; technological; legal; and environmental.

Planned change
Having a deliberate intention to change, with clearly defi ned start and end points.

Pluralist
A perspective on organizations that acknowledges the existence of different interest groups, and therefore the likelihood of political behaviour.

Positive psychology
A recent branch of psychology that believes in helping individuals and organizations to identify their strengths and to use them to increase and sustain their respective levels of well-being. This includes creating effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities.

Procedural justice
Justice in which there is due notice and explanation.

Process (of change or transition)
How the people involved, in practice, accomplish a change?psychologically and practically.

Process re-engineering
The redesign of business processes to achieve performance improvements.

Processual approach (change)
Approach that sees change as a complex and dynamic process. It focuses on the interrelatedness of individuals, groups, organizations, and society, rejecting the idea that there is a single cause or simple explanation for events.

Programmatic change communication
The topdown dissemination of information, telling employees about what will be happening and how a change should be implemented.

Psychological availability
The belief that you possess the physical, emotional, and psychological resources to personally engage at work despite challenges and distractions.

Psychological contract
A subjective, implicit agreement between an individual and his or her employer, including both what can be expected from the employee and what can be expected from the employer.

Psychological contract violation
A situation in which the implicit promises of the psychological contract (as understood by the individual) are broken.

Psychological meaningfulness
The belief that you are making a difference by expressing yourself at work.

Psychological safety
The belief that you can reveal and be yourself without fear of negative consequences.

Pull (Lean)
The flow of the process towards the customer.

Punctuated equilibrium
A model of change that sees organizations evolving through long periods of stability, which are broken (punctuated) by bursts of discontinuous change.

[Back to top]

Quality circle
A group that meets to solve work related problems together, the circle of people remaining intact from project to project.

[Back to top]

Rapid improvement event
A workshop used in the Lean process to make small, quickly introduced changes.

Reactive change
Change made in response to circumstances, because the industry or wider business environment conditions have changed.

Realization
The role of the leadership team in organizations of weaving strategic achievements (and failures) into a coherent storyline.

Realized strategy
Strategy as it turned out in pratice, recognized retrospectively in patterns of actual organizational behaviour.

Recreation
Fundamental changes to the organization in response to crisis.

Redesign merger
A merger or acquisition involving the orginal culture of one organization prevailing in the whole group.

Refreeze
The third step in Lewin's model of change, which seeks to embed and normalize the changes.

Relational knowledge
Individuals' understanding of the intentions, concerns, and interests of other individuals and social relationships.

Relational processes
Processes focusing on the relationship between two or more people, intervening in the patterns and dynamics to effect change.

Resistance
Acts deliberately done, or not done, in opposition to others' desires.

Resistance leadership
A leader who galvanizes fellow resistors into collective action.

Resource-based view of strategy
A perspective on strategy that focuses on the internal resources of the organization.

Resources
The assets available to an organization. These can be physical (inventory, plant, factories, buildings), monetary (credit, cash), and human (skills, knowledge, client relationships).

Revolutionary cultural change
A change in which the organization is forced into abandonment of values by adoption of new, antagonistic ones. In effect, it becomes a new organization.

Rhetorical crafting
The art of verbal expression, which can involve the use of repetition, which aids recall, the use of different rhythms to keep the audience's interest, the use of rhetorical questions and dramatic pauses, as well as the use of stories and metaphors.

[Back to top]

Scale of change
How rapid and substantial the change is.

Scenario planning
A strategic planning exercise through which different possible versions of an organization's future are imagined.

Scope of a metaphor
The aspects of something, or some situation, to which a metaphor is relevant.

Second-order change
Thinking completely differently about something-operating from a completely different perspective or frame of reference.

Self-directed groups
Groups in which there is no one leader automatically assigned as a result of seniority.

Self-organization and emergence
The interaction between people that creates population-wide patterns, for which there is no blueprint or plan.

Self-organize
How order emerges and is maintained in complex systems.

Sensegiving
Active efforts to influence the way in which events are interpreted in organizations.

Sensemaking
The way in which people establish interpretations and link them with their own actions.

Shared beliefs
Views regarded as true by many employees.

Shared meanings or understandings
Ways of understanding a situation (or event or action or communication) that are shared among many employees or across the whole organization.

Shared values
Goals and standards to which many employees aspire.

Short-run responsiveness
The capacity to flex the costs and resources quickly to respond to new needs.

Single-loop learning
Learning based on planning, implementation of plans, monitoring the impact, and analysing how to improve performance to meet a pre-existing goal, and based on pre-existing values and assumptions.

Situated perspective on emotions
The view that emotions are distinctive ways in which to engage with, and alter, social situations.

Six Sigma
A change method that aims to minimize variation in outputs.

Social constructionism
The view that 'reality' as we perceive it-including the reality of organizations-derives from, and is maintained by, interactions between people.

Social constructionist perspective on emotions
The view that emotions, and the ways in which they are expressed, are formed and shaped by societal culture.

Socialization activities
Following a merger or acquisition, activities that enable employees from the two former organizations to meet and work together.

Span
The extent of the organization that is affected by the change, from one team or unit, to the whole organization and its partners.

Spread (change)
New practices adopted in one part of the organization or industry spread more widely.

Standard deviation
The square root of the variance. This is the most commonly applied measure of variation and takes into account all data points and their distances from the mean.

Strategic alliance
A formal relationship, between two or more parties, to pursue agreed goals jointly.

Strategic knowledge
Individuals' awareness of the organization's goals, competitors, and broader environmental context.

Strategy
The mix of deliberate plans and emergent patterns that integrate an organization's major goals, policies, and action sequences.

Strategy core value
A value that is likely to be central to the successful implementation of an intended strategy.

Strategy peripheral value
A value that is likely to be helpful for the successful implementation of an intended strategy, but which is of only minor importance to this.

Strong organizational culture
An organizational culture in which there is a deeply held consensus on values, symbols, beliefs, and assumptions among the employees.

Subculture
A distinct group of employees with values, beliefs, symbols, and assumptions that differ from those of other employees.

Surface acting
A form of emotional labour in which an employee feigns emotion that he or she does not feel, or hides what is really felt.

Survivors
People who remain working for an organization after redundancies have been made.

Survivor syndrome
The characteristic emotions and attitudes found among survivors of redundancy programmes.

Sustaining change
The process through which new working methods, performance enhancements, and continuous improvements are maintained for a period appropriate to a given context.

Symbols
Particular established shared meanings associated with certain artefacts.

Systems thinking
Mapping out interrelationships between different factors or issues inside and outside the confines of an organization, and viewing their interaction as a system.

[Back to top]

Tacit knowledge
Knowledge that cannot easily be articulated, and which is rooted in action rather than theory or information; can include both skills and mental models.

Tacit knowledge at a collective level
The routines, work practices, communication styles, and patterns of decision-making and social interaction in the informal organization that provide capability which supports effective working and organizational achievement.

Task environment
The immediate environment with which an organization interacts directly, such as customers, competitors, suppliers, and trade unions.

Task-focused transitions
Constant adjustments made to specific areas of the organization, with management adopting a directive style.

The Conference Model?
The large group method applied to redesign the organization or its processes. Undertaken as a series of five conferences.

Tipping point
The point at which a relatively slow pattern or trend suddenly grows exponentially, as is the case with epidemics.

Toxic emotions
Negative emotions that have become ingrained and rigidified among employees.

Toxin handlers
Employees who support and protect colleagues who are suffering emotionally.

Transactional leader
Someone who responds to employees' immediate self-interests. The relationship is one of exchange, with reward for performance and corrective action if something goes wrong.

Transformational leader
Someone who inspires employees to look beyond self-interest by giving them a vision, or sense of higher purpose, and communicates high expectations.

Transition (or process of change)
The way in which the people involved, in practice, accomplish a change-psychologically and practically.

Transporting (waste, Lean)
Moving goods from one place to another.

Trend
A pattern of behaviour or activity that emerges in the external environment.

Trust
A form of sensemaking in which people willingly accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of someone else.

Turnarounds
Fast discontinuous change transformations, in which management adopt a coercive style.

[Back to top]

Unfreeze
The first step in Lewin's model of change in which any restraining forces preventing the change are destabilized.

Unitarist
A perspective on organizations that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration towards shared organizational goals, and therefore does not countenance the legitimacy of different interest groups.

Unlearning
The abandonment of previous knowledge.

[Back to top]

Values-in-use
Values that can be recognized by the way in which employees behave.

Value stream mapping
Mapping a process: when, where, what, why, and how things happen within that process, and identifying which parts of the process add value.

Variation (Six Sigma)
Differences in quality or standard from one production or instance to the next.

Virtual conferencing
A large group method to enable any number of people to work together via IT-enabled platforms to address organizational issues.

Vision
An image of the future of an organization.

[Back to top]

Waiting (waste, Lean)
Any time during which goods are not moving-waiting to be worked on, waiting for parts, waiting to be delivered, etc.

Wastage (Lean)
Activities that create no value, but which are currently necessary to be maintain operations, in which elimination is a priority.

Whole system
All of the stakeholders of the organization, issue, or community.

[Back to top]