Mapping Change Management

Today's organizations are continually undergoing changes to make improvements in their efficiency and effectiveness. The ability for organizations to effectively implement and sustain successful change, however, has been limited, with most change initiatives failing to attain the desired success. To counter this trend, researchers, across several disciplines, have worked to provide practitioners better insight into how to facilitate change within their organizations. This research has developed many theories as to what constitutes change and how best to implement it, but lacks a unifying theory that encompasses all aspects of change research. This effort took a step in providing a better understanding of the change management field and its nature. By using a co-citation methodology, 141 influential authors from the field of change management were identified. Using quantitative techniques, their works were categorized into identifiable sub-groups within the field and mapped, providing insight into the level of integration that has occurred within the field and across the disciplines that have explored change. Also, the extent that the existing theories have begun to converge toward a unifying theory is observed. The culmination of this effort was to provide future researchers better direction in what research needs to be done, to help the field of change mature towards a unifying theory. This unifying theory can then be translated into successful practices that can enable organizations to successful transition through needed change initiatives.