Management Scholarship and Organisational Change

“Miriam Green’s critical study of how a theory of change got changed in research on change is respectful scholarship par excellence. This book makes a humbling and compelling case for the philosophical primacy of returning to original texts.” — Dr Wim Vandekerckhove, Reader in Business Ethics, University of Greenwich, Editor-in-Chief, Philosophy of Management

“This is a scrupulous, comprehensive and fair-minded account of how a complex, rich theory of change came to be misinterpreted by researchers, teachers and practitioners alike. Numerous failed organisational ‘change programmes’ and ‘transformation strategies’ testify to the human and material costs and the importance of the intellectual failures Miriam Green so compellingly deconstructs.” — Nigel Laurie, Managing Partner, London Facilitators and former Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Management, Royal Holloway School of Management, UK

“With this book, Miriam Green has accomplished a vital as well as crucial contribution to both academic and practitioner literature in the field of the management of organisational change by representing a holistic approach and interpretation of the main work of Burns and Stalker’s The Management of Innovation. Green shows us how unilateral former representations of Burns and Stalker have been in terms of objectivist, structuralist and positivist interpretations in contrast to Burns and Stalker’s original concerns for pluralist, inclusive, and subjective approaches. In other words, Green highlights how the neglect of political, practical, individual and subjective factors facing managers has generally been neglected in scholarly readings of The Management of Innovation. With Green’s book, the human factor has been returned in representing Burns and Stalker’s vital work, changing its image to an inclusive, sustainable, and dialectical contribution to the business management literature for academia as well a

Miriam Green was for many years a Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University and is currently teaching at Icon College of Technology and Management. She completed a PhD in Organisation Studies, on which this book is based, and has also written journal articles and book chapters in this field. Her current research interests include critiques of neo-liberalism and postmodernism.