Abstract
This book is about change. Change in complex issues. Change in complex issues always has the following three characteristics. Firstly, there are always multiple actors involved in this type of change. Put differently, the changes occur in a network of actors. These actors are, in a sense, dependent on each other. They need each other’s support in effectuating the change, or, at the very least, they should be prepared not to frustrate or obstruct the change. The second characteristic is that these actors negotiate with each other. One needs the other, and vice versa. This is why the actors negotiate. The negotiations are complex in themselves. It is very unlikely that one negotiation session is sufficient to shape the change in a detailed and definitive way. More likely, this will require a series of meetings. And thirdly, the negotiation is a process, a series of meetings that can stretch across a longer period of time, sometimes even years.
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- 1.
The notion of change management as process management can be found in several places in management literature: in the literature about change management in professional organizations (for example [1, 4]), about networks and network organizations (e.g. [5, 7, 10, 11]), about consensus building and mediating (e.g. [8, 13]), about stakeholder management (e.g. [6]), about management of change (e.g. [3]), and about shaping negotiation processes (e.g. [12, 14]).
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de Bruijn, H., ten Heuvelhof, E.F., in ‘t Veld, R. (2010). Introduction: Process and Content. In: Process Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13941-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13941-3_1
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