ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -DYNAMICS AND DIMENSIONS-

1967-12A great deal of current wntmg in the field of management and organization has been devoted to discussion of the process of organizational change. Most of these discussions have been very general and have not analyzed this fascinating organizational phenomenon with any rigor or precision. Consequently, many people have an impression of organizational change as a nebulous, illdefined, yet simple and singular process. While there is much that we do not know about change, we do know enough to be able to talk about change more precisely. This article attempts to do this, with the specific purpose of identifying and exploring some of the dimensions of change. Before starting this exploration, however, we should like to make some general comments about change in order to provide a starting point for discussion. The first general consideration of note is that the process of change is deceptively complex. Because change does have many variables with a large number of interrelations among these variables, we find it difficult to talk about it meaningfully. The complexity of the process is overwhelming, and in order to discuss it at all, we have to greatly oversimplify it. Our communication facilities are inadequate. Having oversimplified it for discussion purposes, we then tend to oversimplify it conceptually, and actually regard it as a simple process. It is not