Discuss the view presented by Nasim and Sushil (2011) that managing Essay

Discuss the view presented by Nasim and Sushil (2011) that managing change invariably involves managing paradoxes and in partic - Essay Example This view of organisation change’s reality indicates a postmodernist oncology, where change remains fluid and elusive. As a result, to understand it demands acknowledging and accepting its dynamic, fluid nature. Managing changes requires managing paradoxes through a postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology because of the existence of diverse types of changes, resistance to changes, and narratives for attaining individual and organisational changes. The paradox of change lies in the postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology. Postmodernist thinking on the study of being views reality as a combination of different ways of seeing. The study of organisational changes has intersected various concepts from diverse fields, such as child development and evolutionary biology, and yet not many scholars have integrated them in a systematic manner (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 510). Poggie (1965: 284) remarks on the paradox of knowing reality: â€Å"A w ay of seeing is a way of not seeing.† One epistemological view of reality is one way of not seeing reality through another perspective. van de Ven and Poole (1995: 511) urge for an interdisciplinary approach to seeing the reality of organisational change: â€Å"It is the interplay between different perspectives that helps one gain a more comprehensive understanding of organisational life, because any one theoretical perspective invariably offers only a partial account of a complex phenomenon.† They promote a postmodernist view of seeing and knowing the reality of organisational change because it enriches its understanding. Furthermore, the paradox-of-change approach uses postconstructivist epistemology using competing theories to explore and to illustrate it. van de Ven and Poole (1995) offer a typology of process theories that examine how and why change happens in social or biological units. These are life cycle, teleological, dialectical and evolutionary process theor ies. These four theories stand for essentially different event chains and generative components that they called â€Å"motors† to depict the processes and causes of changes (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 511). van de Ven and Poole (1995) stress that organisational change do not neatly fit only one of these process theories because some conditions can stimulate interdependent changes across different organisational elements. They stress the complexity of changes: â€Å"Even though each of these types has its own internal logic, complexity and the potential for theoretical confusion arise from the interplay among different motors† (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 534). The paradox of changes arises from the reality of spontaneous effects of changes, anticipated or otherwise. Sturdy and Grey (2003) criticise the one-sided view of organisational change management (OCM) discourses that emphasise stability over changes. They offer different views of changes using discourse analysi s. They conclude the need for using different lenses in understanding changes and in attaining effective changes. Hence, this essay finds it useful to see changes from a postmodernist view of organisational reality and knowledge. The paradox of change and continuity affects different kinds and stages of changes. Managing changes in different types of changes require balancing change and continuity. Nadler and Tushman (1989) examined diverse large-scale organisational changes and provided several insights and generalisations. They reviewed