Organizational invariants and organizational change

The paper reviews and criticizes available views of organizational change’ for being based on the 'degree' of change deemed to be possible and effective, and for overstating the need for simulataneous change in organizational attributes. The paper then outlines a more general model, overcoming those limitations, conceptualizing change as a combination of organizational variants and invariants, intended as qualitatively different organizational elements. The increased predictive, explanatory and prescriptive power of the proposed approach is illustrated using a longitudinal case study of organizational changes in Pilkington.