THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODELS FROM 1950 TO 2020

Abstract

In the modern world economy, the survival of the organization increasingly depends on the ability of management to understand and manage change. The organization is constantly on the move and nothing should be considered static. Many diverse factors affect change, and few are under the control of the organization. The task of management is to understand the nature of changes, accept them, and direct them. However, there is no generally accepted model in the field of organizational change management. Many researchers and practitioners have failed to reach a consensus on which model is more effective for organizational change to be successful. This paper aims to identify the most influential organizational change models from 1950 to 2020. In order to identify them an analysis of 16 leading journals was carried out. The first 10 journals are listed on the Financial Times 50 list as the most influential in business and management and were selected for the analysis based on their relevance and scope (organizational change management). Other 6 journals were selected for the analysis as they are published by the world's prestigious academic institutions and have a high impact on the field of organizational change. Analysis of the journals in the period from 1950 to 2020 was performed, and 19 models of organizational change management that are relevant for this research were extracted. Afterward, an examination of domestic literature was conducted. There, three additional referent models were identified using the keywords: "model" and "change" within the research of the COBIB.SR database. The identified models of organizational change are then further analyzed and divided into three groups - process models that focus on the actual steps or phases of the change - 14 models, structural models that discuss the factors of change - 5 models; and integrated ones that use a combination of the previous two approaches - 3 models.