[From old to new hospital: physical change and development]

This paper examines a case of organizational change: the moving of a hospital to a new location. The change is considered in the light of two dimensions: the physical change from the old to the new structure ("logistic/physical change") and the change in the mode of working ("change in work-life"). The problem is to understand if, and how, these two change dimensions appear in the employees' (nurses and doctors) representation of the event. A theoretical framework was delineated based on three main constructs, i.e. an idea of organization as: a) the declination in time of the coordinated and interdependent employees' actions (course of decisions and actions); b) an ordering function of the course of decisions and actions rooted in the employee's cognitive schema ("context", "structure"); c) a set of meanings, at different levels, that constitute a common background and shared, in part, by the ordering function ("institutional frame"). A qualitative investigation was carried out, based on narrative in-depth interviews addressed to the top management of the different departments (SOC). A total of 34 medical and nurse managers were interviewed. Analysis of the interviews show that the discontinuous approach may be described according to five different "pure" types (as per Weber's theory). The five types are discussed within the above theoretical framework and in relation to their implications for organizational development.