Applicability of Lewin’s Change Management Theory in Australian Local Government

Abstract

Local government are typically considered to be resistant to innovation and are relatively inert compared to other forms of organisation. This article examines the 'process' of organisational change. Among other theories, process-based change theories consider change as an on-going process. Thus, change typically occurs in multiple steps that take a considerable amount of time to unfold and efforts to bypass steps seldom yield a satisfactory result. Planned change advocates that organisations move from one fixed stage to another, through a series of pre-determined stages. This article concludes that Lewin's (1951) planned approach to change can still be used to investigate change management in the city councils. Lewin's (1951) models are highly generic. It argues that the focus of the change must be on the behaviour of the group, concentrating on factors such as group norms, roles, interactions, and socialisation processes. Lewin's (1951) models are more relevant to incremental and isolated change projects which are often the case for the Australian local government.