Managing strategic change: moving others from awareness to action

A recent study of 10 hospitals investigated how institutions actually manage change, and how their decisions and actions mesh with accepted formal planning and management processes. In every instance, strategic change was managed in different ways, reflecting variations in organizational capabilities, culture, values and traditions. However, there are underlying unities within the diversities of change. This article focuses on the change management process: how 10 hospitals moved from an awareness of the need to do something different to the actions taken to implement change. The theoretical underpinnings of the change management process will be reviewed in light of what actually happened at the study hospitals.