| Abstract: | According to many professional publications, organizational change represents a major challenge for managers today. The purpose of this study was to determine the major reasons why organizational changes fail and the major reasons why changes succeed. The research instrument was a questionnaire. Respondents were asked to describe one specific change effort that has occurred in the last two years. The respondents were 210 managers from a cross‐section of industries and job‐functions across North America. Findings were summarized in the form of eleven conclusions that dealt with types of organizational changes, complexity of change efforts, success rates, sponsorship, internal and external factors that motivate change, measures of success, correlates of success, and, separately, correlates of failure, respondents' recognition of key “enablers” and “barriers” to change, and the extent to which enablers and barriers are common across different types of change. The article ends with a list of nine recommendations for the management of organizational change. |
