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When an organization decides to hire an external consultant to assist in dealing with a significant change, the question arises as to how to choose the right one for the job. The focus of this paper is to explore this relationship through three propositions. The first proposes that an organization employing a consultant can expect to reduce the time going through change transformation and regain productivity faster. The second is that because the focus is on significant change, there is the belief that the consultant must become intimately involved with the organization to be effective. The third proposition is that in order to be an effective consultant within the organization, experience as a teacher/educator is important if not required. Utilizing qualitative grounded theory research, these three propositions are examined for validity with the findings supporting the first two propositions, but not the third.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the use of Emotional Intelligence (EI) is proposed as a means to assess how an organization can improve staff performance and productivity (emphasis on leadership), and develop a more effective Human Resources strategy to deal with organizational change.

Through the examination of contemporary research and following a definition review of EI, the service sector benefits, use as a metric, and influence on an organization's human resources strategy (recruitment and training) are presented as justification for EI being a positive influence on the change transformation management strategy.

Research suggests that EI may be a predictor of success, not unlike IQ, in cognitive‐based performance. By incorporating considerations of EI into the organization's change management philosophy, not only does the individual employee have opportunity to improve, but the enterprise gains as well.

EI is offered as a metric to measure the success not only of the organization, but also of the individual employee. Caution is recommended to consider the return‐on‐investment in using this metric based on the appropriate and expected utilization.

This article addresses how EI can be viewed as a positive influence for improving staff ability to manage the organization's business as well as provide some insight of progress assessment during times of major uncertainty caused by significant change. In this way an organization can facilitate change in a positive climate and influence the culture to be more adaptive and agile. The end result can be an organization that does demonstrate sensitivity even during significant change transformations.

With significant change as an ongoing challenge, the development and use of a flexible change curriculum is identified as a success factor that will allow an organization to optimize the outcome from change transformations.

After discussing significant change, this paper will contrast two organizations in support of a flexible curriculum taking into account multiple theories addressing change, learning, planning, utilization of a curriculum, and assessment, all to enhance the change transformation experience.

The research, investigation, introduction, implementation and refinement of the action plan play a very important role in how the enterprise accommodates change. It is further suggested that at the heart of any action plan is a flexible curriculum by which the organization can use a formulated educational plan to adjust its current mode of operation to incorporate an ongoing change philosophy.

The intent is to identify benefits in using a curriculum to aid significant change transformations where logic and reality can justify its use.

It is postulated that a well‐developed yet flexible curriculum with assessment to track the impact of changes throughout the process will serve to enhance the flexibility of the enterprise and its ability to deal with change. The curriculum serves as the means that provides the organizational membership with identified learning and instruction to mix corporate culture with change urgency.

Taking into account change and learning theories, an action plan in the form of a flexible curriculum with assessment is recommended to optimize significant change transformations.

As organizations attempt to deal with change that is transforming, research has identified factors that need to be present in order to optimize the change transformation. The purpose of this research paper is to focus on those critical success factors.

After presenting a summary of the identified success factors, a combined quantitative and qualitative research methodology focusing on a single case study examines these critical factors in more depth.

Presented are identified factors of previous research, and two additional critical factors are revealed: flexible curriculum – the need for a comprehensive action plan having a prescribed curriculum; and perception of personal gain – the need to present a clear understanding addressing the aspirations and individual personal goals of those who are both involved and affected by the significant change.

Beyond the limitations inherent in conducting both qualitative and quantitative research on a single case study, the emphasis of this investigation was at one end of a success continuum. While the focus was on the critical and important factors (one end), that leaves the discussion of any other factors and the continuum itself for future research.

By having an action plan that addresses the critical factors for dealing with significant change, the organization increases its chances of a successful transformation, and it may also become a more flexible organization able to deal with future change.

Through this research, two new critical success factors are identified that have impact upon organizations attempting to go through a major significant change transformation.

This paper seeks, from the perspective of the significant change (SC) champion, to explore the motivation behind why an individual willingly adopts SC. This research attempts to identify the key motivational traits that inspire these early change adopters.

An in‐depth case study is used to research and identify key early adopters traits. This is followed by a survey based on APEX emotional intelligence profiling traits to do an in‐depth investigation.

The SC‐champion has an interest to re‐affirm one's importance in the organization as well as enhance his/her respect, which is not necessarily linked to longevity. There is an emphasis on intrinsic values favoring team involvement. Of the APEX identified four profiles, the red‐performers are the least preferred.

Because qualitative methodologies are used and a limited survey respondent pool (n=25), caution is advised in freely generalizing these findings. The research on the subject matter is offered as a means to substantiate or refute the propositions. The intent is to offer the findings for possible transferability where logic and reality can assist.

The need to deal with SC is becoming crucial to the ongoing success of organizations. By identifying and investigating the motivational factors behind early acceptance, the organization can begin to deal with change urgency and optimize the benefits from change transformations.

Since change is recognized as an ongoing phenomenon, looking at the motivation behind the early adopters will aid organizations in identifying those key traits that aid in optimizing successful SC transformations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore change leadership in the context of traumatically experienced change. “Being-centeredness” is proposed as a change leadership paradigm, with the leader becoming a facilitative instrument who assists restoration of a healthy working environment, healed emotions and change transitioning.

This paper is a conceptual research paper. Conceptualizations of being-centeredness are developed by building on the discourse of change emotions in organizations and research on change leadership.

Change interventions are experienced more traumatic than often believed. Healing of these emotions is essential to avoid stuckness. Becoming an instrument of change enables being-centered leaders to assist the emotional healings of victims and survivors when change is experienced as traumatic, promoting individual transitioning, restricting resistance to enhance change readiness and resilience.

Although conceptualizations are supported by an abundance of research and practical experience, as with any conceptual research, it lacks direct empirical evidence to support the conceptualizations.

Being-centeredness is an untapped inner capacity in many change leaders and change interventions. Explicitly normalizing and promoting being-centeredness and the further development of this capacity in leaders will allow this latent capacity to surface from its suppressed state, to be applied overtly.

The paper provides a new paradigm on leaders can and should deal with acute emotions that are often experienced from change, which focus more on the way of being of leaders, than competencies or change activities that must be done. This is likely to further emotional healing, change transitioning, resilience and ultimately change success.

The purpose of this paper is to gain understanding into the human factors which might impede the change process. Change is inevitable in contemporary organizations and particularly within the healthcare field with respect to information technology (IT). Regardless of the amount of literature surrounding change management process organizational leaders will often ignore the human factors associated with the introduction of new IT.

This study sought to examine physician resistance surrounding the Electronic health record (EHR) change process through the lens of each of these three aspects of the Bovey and Hede (2001a) model through semi-structured interviews with physicians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with physicians from hospitals within the Midwest.

The findings suggest that physicians have been impacted by the EHR change management system within their hospitals. Though each of the participants experienced different issues; it was clear from the data the change to an EHR system was disruptive to their day-to-day routines and caused various challenges. EHR change management research demonstrates physicians are resisting the change despite recognizing its potential benefits.

This paper contributes to the change management literature by examining how physician resistance can have a negative impact on healthcare organizations during a precipitous technology change. The study also provides a unique understanding of how technology resistance can disrupt an organizational change process.

This paper aims to analyse the manner in which “objectivist” grounded theory methodology has progressively developed since 1967 and how it has been employed by management researchers.

The paper traces the methodological development of grounded theory with particular emphasis on the variations, contradictions and modifications to the methodology both between and within the Glaserian and Straussian Schools. Totally 32 empirical grounded theory studies published in the management literature since 2002 are analysed in order to gauge the impact of these variations on the manner in which researchers have employed the grounded theory methodology.

It is argued that grounded theory in management research is in danger of losing its integrity. The methodology has become so pliant that management researchers appear to have accepted it as a situation of “anything goes” “Grounded theory” is now loosely used as a generic term to refer to any qualitative approach in which an inductive analysis is grounded in data.

It could be argued that grounded theory cannot continue to be regarded as a moving target, or to be practised as a free‐for‐all methodology in management research, without risking serious danger of becoming irrelevant. Three suggestions are offered for restoring more discipline into grounded theory studies.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute a roadmap to the change management literature, and provide definitions for describing change types, change enablers and change methods. This paper also proposes aligning the change type with the change method to find the effect on the change outcomes. New researchers can use this paper to get an overview of the change management discipline along with the main concepts that help in understanding the different dimensions of and relationships between the change types and methods in the literature. Managers can use this paper to describe and classify their organizational change situation and select an implementation method for systematic change and for change management.

This framework is designed based on literature review and experts judgment.

The results of the research propose a hypothesis that describes the relationships between the change types and methods and how this relationship can affect the change outcomes.

The main contribution of this research paper is to connect three main knowledge areas of change types, change methods and change outcomes. These three areas are standalone subjects in several publications in the literature. Some researchers connected the change types and change methods, while other researchers connected the change methods and change outcomes. But connecting the change types, change methods and change outcomes remains a new research territory to explore.

Reducing fatalities and increasing the number of students able to remain safe during an active shooter event is paramount to the health and well-being of schools and communities. Yet, methodological limitations and ethical concerns have restricted prior research on security measures during school shooter lockdown drills. This study aims to fill that gap by using virtual reality (VR) to statistically examine the effectiveness of active shooter response protocols in a simulated high school.

Using a full factorial, within-subjects experimental design, this exploratory investigation used VR technology to investigate whether automatic classroom door locks, centralized lockdown notifications and the presence of a school resource officer (SRO) significantly impacted student safety and casualty mitigation. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 37 individuals who volunteered to participate in 24 school shooter scenarios within a simulated virtual environment.

Multiple one-way analysis of variances indicated significant main effects for automatic classroom door locks and SRO presence. Automatic locks yielded faster lockdown response times, and both factors were significantly associated with higher numbers of secured classrooms.

Findings from the current study address the gap in existing literature regarding evidence-based school safety protocols and provide recommendations for using VR simulations to increase preparedness and reduce fatalities during an active school shooter event.