Change Management from a Stakeholder Perspective

With the ever increasing rate of change the pressure continues to rise on all types of organisations for quicker and more effective change. Companies of today face multiple requirements which have caused a shift from shareholder focus to a more balanced stakeholder focus. In the 80s and 90s the Japan originated quality movement with its focus on customers was by many seen as the solution for effective change. Change program focus has since shifted from Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Excellence models to 6Sigma improvement and Lean Management in parallel with behaviourally oriented change approaches with their focus on leadership. There does not seem to be any clear typology that relates different improvement approaches within the larger context of Change Management. The main purpose of this paper is to review how change management is defined and presented and to propose a stakeholder based taxonomy for organisational change management and to also portray if and how quality management could be seen as part of this. This is done with the view of increasing the understanding of what constitutes effective change. The results here form only a first iteration of a more extensive work to come. The purpose is to identify critical elements for change. Change Management has been described as a process. Elements identified have then been placed into a process based system. The first results indicate that Quality Management could be seen as part of Change Management and that the chosen approach using the process view is promising, but also that the process of change is complex and that considerable further research is required