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Balancing Acts: A Human Systems Approach to Organizational Change
Hardcover
ISBN13: 9781487540272
Publisher: Rotman Utp Publ
Published: Oct 15 2021
Pages: 376
Weight: 1.49
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Balancing Acts offers consultants and managers a simple, powerful way to think about change, and ascribes a four-phase iterative process for implementing change. Reviewing change initiatives from different types of organizations, Balancing Acts confronts the problems and pitfalls head-on that often arise during workplace transitions. Conklin explains why organizational change can be so difficult, and shows that by balancing a set of competing psychological and systemic challenges, interveners will increase their chance of success.
Conklin shows that human groups function as complex systems, and that a change initiative is not a linear progression toward a predefined result. Instead, change is an iterative process that involves a search for feasible and useful solutions. The book's central argument is that while leading or supporting this search, consultants and leaders must balance four critical concerns: confrontation and compassion, participation and observation, assertion and inquiry, and planfulness and emergence.
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