The Rhetoric of Organizational Change

This study is a discussion of change strategies:the contextual aspects of change and the rhetoric ofchange. Change is analyzed along two dimensions: (1) thecontext of the change initiative in the organization, (2) the relations of the change project to theinstitutional environment. Four cases are used asexamples of inducing change in municipal services. Thefour cases are part of a national reform project. In Norway, municipalities are importantinstitutions both as arenas for political decisions butalso as decentralized instruments for distributing localservices. The main purpose of the reform project was to achieve better adjusted services throughmore interdisciplinary work and local responsibility.Change efforts may be forced on the organization, e.g.,by laws, instructions, and frame budgets or they may be triggered by different voluntarymechanisms. The idea of isomorphismdescribes a passive or incremental adaptation tosignals and from structure imposed by theenvironment. The idea of eruptive change implies enactmentand entrepreneurship in relation to the environmentbased on signals from within. The contexts for change atdifferent levels in the municipality are associated with different rhetorics. Context variablesdescribe the situation or background on which the changeinitiatives are interpreted by the institutional actors.The rhetoric of change is the symbolic expression which defines the change process.