Management of change for nurses: lessons from the discipline of organizational studies

This paper explores the literature on change management from the discipline of organizational studies to provide insights that nurse managers can use in their professional practice.

The paper will benefit nurse managers by extending the nursing discourse on change management to include wider theoretical and academic perspectives.

Important aspects of change management explored are the roles of power and political behaviour, how much change can be planned and controlled, how to combine top-down and bottom-up approaches to change, the role of emotions in the change management process, a comparison of prescriptive and analytical approaches to understanding change, and the connection between theory and practice in managing change.

While nurses can draw much useful information from within the nursing discipline, they can also benefit by exploring other disciplinary areas. In the case of change management, there are many useful lessons nurses can carry over into their professional practice.