Organizational Change (Public Administration)

Major adjustments in how an agency or company goes about its business. Examples of organizational change would be a traditional college moving to offer its courses and programs online or an Internet provider keeping up with competitors by eliminating or drastically lowering monthly fees.

Organizations need to regularly adapt their structures, policies, and personnel to new situations in order to effectively pursue established and emergent goals. Organizations are also social systems whose members build up a substantial investment in the familiar values, stable relationships, steady benefits, and overall predictability that arise from day-to-day organizational functioning. Any organization's need to adapt will always clash to some degree with entrenched and influential forces that strongly desire to keep things the same. Organizational change thus engages both executives and employees in critical analysis that frequently engenders conflict as the path to organizational renewal is decided on and then traversed.