Slawek Magala’s view on management of meaning and organisational change: An essay in honour of Slawek Magala

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to show that Slawek Magala’s theory of management of meaning in organisations can be considered as a step towards a generic theory of organisational change.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors are integrating Slawek Magala’s views on the processes, which play a role in changing organisations (i.e. framing, reflecting, negotiating, and seeking new windows of opportunities) with the related types of narratives as developed by David Boje (2001, 2008) and with further extensions by Fink and Yolles (2012), which are based on a model of paradigm change.

Findings

The authors develop a theoretical framework, which might serve as a basis for analysis of change processes emerging from different contexts within or outside a firm and offer some reflections about comparing research into issues of organisational change.

Research limitations/implications

This is a theoretical viewpoint paper.

Practical implications

The extension of Magala’s model offers a practical guide for research into organisational change processes.

Social implications

Magala’s model offers a deeper understanding of actual change processes.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time where a concept about emergent causality deriving from interaction between two conflicting agents (i.e. involved parties as, e.g. managers and subordinates) is applied to emerging stages in change processes.

Citation

Fink, G. and Dauber, D. (2016), "Slawek Magala’s view on management of meaning and organisational change: An essay in honour of Slawek Magala", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 59-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2015-0222